The Righteous Side of Hell
by VoicesOffCamera
Summary: "While the Wizarding world celebrated the defeat of a truly evil man, to Sirius it felt like the battle had been lost. The war was over, and everything had been taken from him." Sirius Black spent twelve years of his life in locked up for a crime that he did not commit. This is a look at his days in Azkaban Prison.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One** **  
** _ **November 2**_ _ **nd**_ _ **, 1981**_

* * *

 _"Those who entered to investigate refused afterwards to talk of what they had found inside, but the least frightening part of it was that the place was infested with dementors."_

— _J.K. Rowling_

* * *

He had expected it to be more intimidating. In fact as he looked at it he realized that it was just a building. True, the building was isolated on a small island that was little more than a rock in the ocean and was surrounded by dementors. But somehow Sirius Black couldn't find it in himself to get worked up about that.

He sat in the middle of a small boat, surrounded by four Aurors all with their wands trained on him. He found this to be a bit comical. It wasn't like he couldn't escape if he wanted to. All he would have to do was get himself over the side of the boat and into the frigid water. Once under he could change into a dog and the shackles around his wrists and ankles would simply fall off. Upon not seeing his human self resurface it was likely they would all assume that he had drowned. Easy.

But what would be the point? What would he have to go back to? His life had been completely shattered in the past forty-eight hours. James and Lily were dead. Remus would blame him. And Peter, the coward that he was, had disappeared into the sewers after betraying his friends. They had been all that he had after he left his biological family behind at sixteen years old. Now he was left with nothing.

Sirius could feel the moment that the boat came in range of the dementors. It wasn't like he had any pleasant thoughts for them to feed off of at the moment, but all the same the icy cold of their presence hit him hard and he wasn't dressed as warmly as the Aurors were. A shiver shot through his spine and then shuttered through his appendages.

One of the Aurors smirked at him. "Best get used to that, Black," he sneered, clearly mistaking his reaction to the temperature as fear. "You'll be surrounded by dementors for the rest of your natural life."

The other Aurors laughed, seeming to find this terribly funny. Sirius remained silent, his features blanked of all emotions as he stared vacantly at the Auror who had spoken. The laughter awkwardly died off after a minute. Clearly they were used to getting more of a reaction out of the prisoners they brought here.

As they got closer Sirius gazed up at the dark creatures that floated overhead. He found it vaguely interesting that even after several had actively joined Voldemort during the war, the creatures were still trusted to guard the prison that would soon hold most of Voldemort's loyal supporters. But the Minister seemed willing to do anything if it meant making people feel safe again. Whether it meant allowing dangerous and unpredictable creatures guard criminals or it meant sentencing a twenty-two year old man to life in prison without a trial.

He didn't realize they had reached the island until the boat bumped into the rocks, jarring him out of his trance. The boat rocked violently as two of the Aurors stood and transferred to the adjacent land. Sirius waited until they motioned him forward before he gingerly stood. His balance was off due to the shackles around his wrists and ankles. He struggled to step out of the boat and onto the slick rocks on the island. No one offered him help, they simply watched as he stumbled onto the island. He really hadn't expected any different though.

As the other two Aurors climbed out of the boat, Sirius stood there and looked up at the building in front of him. The cold wind whipped through him, but he hardly seemed to notice. He just kept staring at what was to become his new home.

Azkaban Prison.

Up this close he realized that it was larger than he had thought it would be. And suddenly it hit him. This very well may be the last time he was ever outside, the last time he ever felt the fresh air against his skin. He took in a deep breath. The air was cool and smelled thickly of saltwater.

"Let's go, Black," one of the Aurors behind him said, giving him an impatient shove.

Just this was enough to cause Sirius to slip on the rocks under his feet and send him toppling painfully to the ground, only barely able to catch himself with his bound hands to prevent his face from bouncing off of the rocks. Apparently this proved to be even funnier than the Auror's joke about him being surrounded by dementors for the rest of his life as the men around him roared with laughter. Sirius clenched his jaw angrily. Was it really necessary for them to make this worse than it already was?

"On your feet," another Auror spat once the laughter had died off, nudging him with his foot. "We haven't got all day."

"This is where they all break down," one of the other Aurors commented, chuckling at the thought.

Sirius closed his eyes and summoned what little energy he could. He was determined not to go into this kicking and screaming. He would not complicate the process. If the general public felt better with him behind bars, so be it. He couldn't bring himself to care much, not after everything that had happened. While the Wizarding world celebrated the defeat of a truly evil man, to Sirius it felt like the battle had been lost. The war was over, and everything had been taken from him. This was now where he belonged. He pulled his feet up underneath him and carefully stood. His palms were bleeding from where they had scraped against the rocks. As he glanced down he could see there were holes in the knees of his pants as well.

Without being given much time to regain his balance, Sirius was roughly pushed along toward the prison. As they walked the rock gave way to hard earth under their feet. Sirius' eyes strayed to either side of the path they traveled. There were peculiar bumps in the ground every couple feet. They seemed to be too deliberate and too consistent to be a natural part of the island. That was when he noticed small stones at the head of each of the mounds. Grave markers. It was a cemetery. He glimpsed one of the stones that was close by the path. Engraved into the stone was not a name or even any dates but simply a number. Buried here were all those who had died while imprisoned in Azkaban. The graves went on for as far as the eye could see. These were the bodies of people who had been abandoned and forgotten by the outside world.

This was his fate.

He turned his head, unable to stomach the sight any longer. It was with a look of grim resolution on his face that Sirius allowed himself to be led up the path toward Azkaban. With each step he felt a weight fall on his soul. How had it come to this?

 _One week and two days before…_

" _It's brilliant, Prongs!" Sirius insisted._

 _But James shook his head. "I dunno…" he murmured, clearly deep in thought. His eyes were troubled and had dark circles under them. He hadn't been sleeping well lately._

 _The two of them were sitting at the kitchen table in Godric's Hollow. A mug of coffee sat in front of James, untouched. Sirius had drained his mug in several large gulps and was now feeling jittery, his leg bouncing restlessly under the table as he watched his friend._

" _Think about it," Sirius went on determinedly. "With all the information Voldemort has about us, I'll bet my motorbike he'll know about the Fidelius Charm. He'll know that in order to get to you he'll have to find the Secret-Keeper. Everyone is going to assume that will be me. I'm the obvious choice. We'll let everyone think that. For once we'll have the upper hand; we'll be one step ahead."_

 _James sighed heavily as he rubbed his eyes under his glasses. "But Peter?"_

" _No one would ever suspect," Sirius said eagerly. He had been obsessed with this idea ever since it first occurred to him. "Peter will go in to hiding and Voldemort will send his Death Eaters after me, which will be a dead end."_

 _James finally looked up at him and met his eyes. He looked so much older all of a sudden. "I don't like offering you up as bait."_

 _Sirius shrugged as he leaned back in his chair. "I can look after myself, mate."_

 _But James shook his head, frowning. "You've had too many close calls already. Half of those Death Eaters have a personal vendetta against you in particular. It's too dangerous."_

" _You've got enough to worry about, James," Sirius said, the smile gone from his face. "Keeping your family safe, that's what's most important right now."_

 _James looked at him in confusion. Then a small smile graced his lips, just a glimpse of the boy that Sirius had met his first year at Hogwarts. "Sirius… you_ are _family. Surprised I have to remind you of that."_

" _Well then, this is what family does then, isn't it?" Sirius pointed out lightly. "They protect each other."_

 _James chuckled as he leaned back in his chair. "How would you know, your first family was as loony as they come."_

 _Sirius couldn't help but grin. Little did he know that would be the last grin that would be caused by James Potter. And it was the last grin that would grace his lips for a very long time. He reached over and gave his best friend a playful shove._

 _They lapsed into silence for a minute as the weight of the situation fell back onto them. They didn't have many light moments anymore and even when they did come about they never lasted long._

" _Do you really think it'll work?" James asked seriously._

 _Sirius met his gaze as he nodded. "Yeah, I do."_

" _Alright," James relented. "I'll talk to Lily about it."_

That had been the last real conversation Sirius had with James. After that everything had moved so quickly. Once they had agreed to make Peter the Secret-Keeper they couldn't waste any time putting the charm into place. James had wanted to tell Remus about the switch, but Sirius had insisted that the fewer people who knew the better. Remus had been so distant lately anyway…

Sirius regretted every single decision he had made over the last week. He should have let James tell Remus. He should have just stuck with the original plan and been the Secret-Keeper himself. This whole thing could have turned out so differently if he had just kept his mouth shut and gone along with James' original plan.

But he hadn't. And that had led him here. They had just approached a door made up of metal bars, the only outside door in the entire prison. The lead Auror banged his fist on a plate of metal that sat just about where a doorknob should have been. For a moment everything was absolutely still. Then out of the darkness on the other side of the door glided a dark, hooded figure. A moment later the heavy door creaked open seemingly of its own accord. He couldn't help but gasp lightly as he looked up into the hooded figure of the dementor. He had never seen one in person before and the description from his old Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook did them no justice.

"Prisoner X-Y-3-9-0," the Auror recited as one of the other Aurors pushed Sirius in front of the rest of them, offering him up like a human sacrifice. "High security cell."

There was a rattling noise from under the black hood. The four Aurors all took deliberate steps back. Sirius felt something pulling at him deep inside. If he had any happy thoughts left they might have been pulled away from him. But as it stood he just felt empty.

Without any further instruction, the creature reached out a long fingered hand covered by scabby grey skin. The sight was revolting. The hand grabbed Sirius' shoulder and it was so cold that it felt like it burned his skin under his grey prison uniform. He was pulled forward into the darkness of the prison and he heard the door close firmly behind him, echoing lightly.

And with that he was officially a prisoner of Azkaban.

The dementor had a surprisingly tight grasp as it pushed him through the darkness. At first Sirius could barely see anything and was stumbling along blindly. It took several minutes for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He was led down a long, narrow hallway, the walls made of the same thick metal that the exterior was made of.

Finally they came out into a large open space. For a moment he was disoriented. His mind had to adjust to the fact that as large as the building had appeared on the outside it was even larger on the inside. Not only was the room he stood in enormous, but as he looked up he saw that it stretched upwards so far that he ceiling appeared as a small square far above them. And floating in the open space were more dementors than he could even begin to count. He felt a wave a despair pushing down on him, the emotion beginning to push away the numbness he had felt up until this point.

As he was still studying the dementors, he became aware of noises echoing throughout the space around him. The sounds of shouting, moaning and crying met his ears. It was the sounds of raw despair. The sounds of the prisoners of Azkaban. The sheer mass of the sound was staggering. The number of prisoners in this building had to be monumental.

The grip on his shoulder tightened to the point where it was painful. He was pushed forward, bringing his attention back down to the present moment. He wasn't sure where the creature was leading him for a minute. Then he saw the bottom of the ramp. He followed it with his eyes as it circled upwards, spiraling out of view. All along the ramp were openings that had barred gates, which he knew led to the cells that confined the prisoners.

He was pushed to the ramp and they started their upward ascent. This was unexpected. He hadn't imagined that he would have to walk the entire way to his cell. The Auror had said he would be in a high security cell and he knew what that meant. They were going all the way to the top. He looked up at the cell doors that seemed the stretch infinitely over his head. It was going to be a long trek.

As he walked with the dementor floating close behind him – seeming to get closer the higher they went – Sirius did his best to focus on his own feet. He didn't want to look into the cells as they made their ascent. He didn't want anyone here to recognize him. All he wanted was to disappear into this new existence. Even so, as they passed door after door he could sense movement out of the corner of his eyes. As they passed many of the prisoners moved to their doors to investigate. New prisoners must be the only form of entertainment they were able to have in this place.

For the most part he was met with unintelligible shouts that he just let wash over him without much thought. It wasn't until twenty minutes into the upward trek, when Sirius was starting to feel short of breath and his muscles were starting to burn with protest that he heard a deep, hoarse voice the cut through the rest of the noise.

"Is that Sirius Black?"

It was enough to cause him to stop in his tracks as he looked around wildly, but he couldn't find the source of the voice.

"Sirius Black? Can't be." It was another hoarse voice, this time distinctly female.

His lack of movement wasn't tolerated for long. Just a moment later the dementor drifted up behind him and he felt the icy cold of the creature's hand tear into his back as it pushed him forward. Sirius stumbled, feeling completely disoriented.

"What would _Sirius Black_ be doing here? You've lost your mind, old man."

"Well, that's beside the point." This statement was followed by manic laughter that made the speaker sound very unhinged.

Suddenly there were whispers coming from all around him. His name was echoed throughout the cells, passed along from one prisoner to the next as the news seemed to spread like wildfire. He flinched every time he heard his name hissed through the bars of the prison as if they were physical assaults. He tried to move faster, desperate to get to the isolation that his cell was sure to provide, but he was quickly tiring as they climbed higher and higher. His muscles were starting to weaken and as he looked up he couldn't see the end of this hellish journey.

Sirius did his best to try and retreat within himself, a protective instinct that he had developed very early on in his life. His legs worked mechanically as he continued to progress, but everything else slowly faded away. The noises washed over him as he stopped listening to the words being said. His eyes dulled as they only took in the necessary details to keep him on the path. He lost all track of time and focused solely on keeping himself moving.

Therefore when a boney hand reached out and grasped his shoulder tightly, digging into his skin he had no idea what was going on. He had been forcibly brought to a stop and he blinked around, confused. That's when he realized that they had stopped in front of a cell that's door was wide open. He looked up. The ceiling hung just a few feet over his head. They had come to the top of the structure. This was his cell.

As he moved toward the opening he took a quick inventory of his surroundings. It seemed quieter up here, though the noises could still be heard echoing up from below. There was no movement from any of the other nearby cells that he could glimpse. Either they were empty or their occupants were too far gone to care about anything outside of their cells.

Finally he took the last steps into his cell. As he crossed the threshold the shackles around his wrists and ankles seemed to melt away, stripped away by some sort of spell. Just a second later the door slammed shut behind him. Then there was the groan of a rusted lock being slid into place. He felt his heart twisting painfully in his chest as his stomach dropped to somewhere down by his feet. He thought he could handle this. But everything was finally hitting him in that moment.

Peter had betrayed them all.

James and Lily were dead.

Remus would blame him.

And Sirius would never see any of his friends again. That thought brought him crashing to his knees as a sob tore through his chest, though tears refused to fall. His gaze drifted to the ceiling as if he could see to a place that lay just beyond and finally he spoke for the first time since he had confronted Peter the day before, his voice rough and broken as it echoed back to him in the empty prison cell.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

 _ **Azkaban Prison: Day One**_


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

 _ **November**_ _ **4th, 1981  
Azkaban Prison: Day Three **_

* * *

" _I certainly believe his master's defeat unhinged him for a while."  
\- Cornelius Fudge_

* * *

Sirius sat on the floor, his back against the cold, stone wall on one side of the cell. His eyes slid shut as he braced himself against a wave of pain that pulsed just under his skull. He gritted his teeth, willing the pain to pass. These episodes had been sporadic at first, but now they were becoming frustratingly common and were lasting longer in duration.

At first he had attributed these headaches – along with his shaky hands and constantly feeling short of breath – to nicotine withdrawal. He had been addicted to Muggle cigarettes since he was sixteen, a vice that had only escalated during the war, to the point where he was able to easily go through at least two packs a day. He hadn't had a smoke since just before James and Lily's death, and it was clearly affecting him.

However, at this point he wasn't so sure withdrawal was completely to blame for his symptoms. He had been sitting in this exact spot, in a daze for so long that he had completely lost track of the passage of time. There was a small, barred window set high in one wall of his cell, but strangely there had yet to be any real deviation in the lighting to indicate a time of day. At least not that he'd noticed. Even so, he guessed that several days had to have passed by now. In that time, he had yet to be given any food or water. He suspected dehydration and perhaps even the beginnings of malnutrition shared at least some of the blame for these blinding headaches.

Finally, the pain in his head began to dull as the episode passed, though he knew at this point not to expect it to completely disappear. Carefully, he opened his eyes. The cell was blurry and had a strange floating quality to it. The sight made him feel nauseous, so he closed his eyes again. The room wasn't much to look at anyway.

He wondered vaguely if this had been the plan all along. Perhaps they threw him in Azkaban to let him wither away and starve to death as punishment for the heinous crime they believe he committed. He found this to be annoying. If they wanted to kill him, they couldn't have picked a quicker method and just been done with it?

" _Why? Do you think you deserve for it to be quick?"_

Sirius' eyes flew open at the sound of the painfully familiar voice. But, as he blinked around he saw that he was just as alone in the cell as ever. His heart was pounding hard in his chest as his eyes searched the empty corners of the room. There was no one there. Even if there was somebody there, it couldn't have been the person he thought he had heard. Could it?

He shook his head, causing the pain in his head to pulsate and he winced. He closed his eyes and put his hand to his forehead. He tried to tell himself that he must have nodded off. That was the only logical explanation. He must have fallen asleep and dreamed that he had heard that voice.

" _It's all your fault, you know."_

Sirius gasped, as his eyes flew open once again. There had been no mistaking it this time. But even though he had heard the voice as clear as day, his cell was still empty. He shot a glance at the barred door, but all that could be seen was the usual Dementor floating just outside of it. So far, it had been hard to tell if the Dementors were really having any effect at all on him, or if it the emptiness he felt was just a result of his own devastation at having his whole life torn apart in one night.

But, whether it was an effect of the Dementors, his own emotional instability, or even because of his dehydration and malnutrition, the fact was clear in his mind. He had heard James Potter's voice.

James had reprimanded him very few times in his life. To that point, he had only really been angry with him one time during the course of their entire friendship: the night that Sirius had sent Severus Snape to the Whomping Willow on the night of a full moon. However, in this moment, Sirius couldn't recall James ever speaking to him kindly. All he heard was malice and disgust in the disembodied voice of his dead friend.

Not even a week into his stay in Azkaban Prison and Sirius was already starting to question his sanity.

" _I_ trusted _you!"_ The voice echoed around the empty, stone cell, the accusation seeming to surround him. _"_ We _trusted you! We put our lives in your hands!"_

Sirius felt the weight of the world falling down on top of him, crushing him. "I… I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice dragging painfully out of his throat. He had spent most of his first day in Azkaban muttering apologies over and over, but no matter how many times he said it, it never seemed to be enough. James and Lily were still dead. He had since fell silent, this being the first time he had spoken out loud in days.

" _It's your fault! You killed us! Lily and I are dead because of you! Harry is an orphan because of you!"_

That one cut Sirius the deepest and he winced as if it were a physical assault. "Please… James…" he moaned as he put his hands up over his head as if he could protect himself. "Please, stop…"

" _Traitor!"_

"No…"

" _You betrayed us!"_

That sparked something inside of him. That wasn't right. It hadn't been him to betray his friends. Sirius may be guilty of putting his friends in the situation that got them killed, but he wasn't the one who had knowingly betrayed them to the man who murdered them. That had been Peter.

"I am no traitor," Sirius mumbled, conviction in his tortured voice. "Just foolish enough to have never questioned Peter's loyalty to us."

That's what it all came down to, wasn't it? It wasn't about his loyalty to the Order or to Dumbledore. None of that mattered in the end. During the war, they had found that it was more important to be loyal to your friends, to the ones fighting by your side that you trusted to watch your back, than anything else. It was all they had during a time where it felt like the world was falling apart around them. Trust. Loyalty. Friendship. And Peter had thrown all of that away. Peter had betrayed them.

He felt a spark of anger rising up within him at this thought. It was the first strong emotion he had felt in days, breaking through the numbness that had consumed him. Finally, it seemed the shock of what had happened was beginning to fade and in its place was a burning fury. He could feel it bubbling up from deep within him. Peter Pettigrew was the boy that they had helped with his homework and had protected from bullies at school. He had been a Marauder. They had shared laughs and worries with him just as they had anyone else in their close group. And how had he repaid them? He had completely destroyed all of their lives in one night.

In a burst of energy that was fueled by pure rage, Sirius lifted one hand up before bringing it down hard, hitting the stone wall behind him. The pain that action caused hardly even registered in his mind. He repeated the motion several times, each time hitting the wall with just a bit more force. It wasn't enough though. Suddenly, adrenalin was coursing through his body, all fatigue from lack of food and water forgotten. He was on his feet, screaming in fury. Words would not form on his tongue, the sounds coming out of his mouth sounding more like an enraged animal than a person. He crossed the small room in two steps and flipped the small cot that had sat against the opposite wall, letting it crash up against the stone barrier. Not satisfied by the noise alone, he proceeded to kick the upturned cot repeatedly, letting out shouts of frustration every time he landed a blow.

He was in such a state that he didn't immediately realize that the cell door had scraped open. It wasn't until a cold wind tore through his thin clothing that he realized anything had changed. Slowly, he turned to find that a Dementor had entered his small space, hovering no more than a foot from where he stood.

Sirius slowly started backing away. The rage he had felt was slowly melting away and he wasn't quite sure if that was an effect of the Dementor's presence or simply the adrenalin of the situation leaving him. As the Dementor followed his retreat, he felt a flicker of fear igniting deep within his chest. What did it want from him? Why had it entered his cell?

His back hit the wall of his cell, signaling that he could go no farther. The Dementor didn't stop though. It drifted still closer to him, it's hood lowering until it was inches from his face. Sirius was gasping for breath, his lungs protesting the frigid air that entered them. The dark creature reached out both of its scabbed hands, grabbing his shoulders and pinning him in place.

"N-no," Sirius whimpered. "Please…"

Slowly, the Dementor took in a loud, rattling breath and Sirius was assaulted by horrific memories, moments in time that he had pushed deep down and hadn't thought of in a very long time. He tried to fight back, he tried to push the Dementor away from him but he was too weak. He tried to think of something else, anything else, but suddenly it was as if he had never been happy in his entire life. It was like a filmstrip set to fast forward, all his worst memories forcefully pulled to the surface of his consciousness, consuming him.

After a minute, the Dementor took another breath, and one particular memory crystalized in Sirius' mind. Suddenly, it was as if he were reliving the memory again, just as clear as if he had just plunged into a Pensieve. The memory consumed him as the walls of this prison seemingly fell away, sending him to a different level of hell.

 _The sun was not even up yet as a small figure padded it's way down the stairs toward the Gryffindor common room. Young Sirius Black held onto the railing tightly as he made his descent, feeling unsteady. He found the common room to be vacant. He paused, contemplating crawling into one of the overstuffed armchairs by the fireplace, which looked particularly inviting. He quickly decided against it though. The warmth and coziness of the common room made him feel uncomfortable and out of place. Instead he headed for the portrait hole, oblivious of the fact that he was still in his pajamas and bare feet, and climbed out into the stone corridor._

 _Sirius started walking, no particular destination in mind. It wasn't as if he knew where anything was anyhow. This had been his first night in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It was supposed to be the start of a new and exciting part of his young life. However, he couldn't help but feel as if a terrible mistake had been made. The night before, the Sorting Hat had declared that he would be placed in Gryffindor rather than Slytherin. His stomach turned uneasily at the memory. He couldn't understand what had happened. His father had assured him that he would be Sorted into Slytherin, just like everyone else in their family. A Black hadn't been Sorted into any other House in their entire history – or so he had been told, anyway. Sirius had felt confident that he would follow in his ancestors' footsteps. Now what was he supposed to do?_

 _He hardly paid any attention to where he was going, though when given the option as he approached a staircase he chose to go up rather than down. Down, he knew, would lead him closer to the dungeons where the Slytherins were. He didn't belong there. So, whenever he came upon a set of stairs he moved up. Finally, he found himself pushing open a door to find that he had come to the top of the tallest tower in the castle, and he could not go any farther._

 _The tower was open aired, with telescopes positioned at intervals around on top of the stone wall, which circled the perimeter. Sirius realized vaguely that this must be where the Astronomy Class was taught. The early morning air was cool and seemed to whip right through his pajamas, but he didn't care. He liked the isolation of this place; he liked feeling as if he was far above the rest of the school. He had felt horribly on display after his Sorting the night before, with the other students and even some of the teachers openly gawking at him. Right now, all he wanted to do was disappear. He sat down with his back up against the wall, pulled his knees up to his chest, and took in a shuttering breath as a tear escaped down his cheek, finally allowing himself to give in to the emotions that had been threatening to overwhelm him since the night before._

 _He an eleven years old child and he was terrified to be separated from his family like this._

 _Sirius wasn't sure how long he sat there and cried, but it had to have been a while as was aware that his surroundings were getting brighter with the rising sun. He heard the door to the tower creak open, but he didn't look up, unable to face anyone in his current state. He buried his head in his arms as they rested on top of his knees and prayed that he would go unnoticed._

" _Sirius?"_

 _He was vaguely surprised by how familiar the voice was that reached out to him. "How did you find me?" he mumbled in a thick voice, not looking up._

 _Andromeda Black carefully took a seat next to him. "I figured you'd have run off this morning," she said gently. "I've been walking the castle for the past hour looking for you."_

" _Oh," was all he could think of to say. He lifted his head as he wiped at the tears staining his face, not looking at the seventh year that sat next to him. There was a quiet pause as he tried to get his emotions under control. He took a couple deep breaths, desperately trying to stop the tears from falling in front of his cousin. It wasn't the most dignified state for a member of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black to be found in, even if he was only eleven years old._

" _Are you okay?" Andromeda asked carefully after a few minutes of awkward silence._

 _Sirius sniffed. "Do I look okay?" he muttered darkly. He fidgeted uncomfortably. "That bloody hat must be broken or something. It made a mistake." Suddenly, he looked up at Andromeda hopefully, overcome by an idea. "If I go to the Headmaster, do you think that he'll let me be Sorted again? I'm sure if the hat gets another chance it'll do it right this time."_

 _Andromeda slowly shook her head, frowning. "No, I don't think that's how it works," she said. Sirius felt his face fall in disappointment. He felt tears gathering in his eyes again, and he blinked furiously against them. After a moment Andromeda spoke again, trying to sound reassuring. "It's not the end of the world, you know."_

" _That's easy for you to say," Sirius snapped. "_ You _were Sorted into Slytherin just like you were suppose to be." He eyed the green trim on her freshly pressed school robes with envy for a moment. Then he dropped his head into his hands, despair washing over him. "Mother and Father are going to be so angry with me."_

" _Forget them," Andromeda declared. Sirius looked up at her in surprised. "Sirius, I've been among the Slytherins for seven years now and I'll tell you something if you promise never to tell anyone in our family."_

" _What's that?" Sirius asked curiously._

" _You don't belong among them," she said with a careful smile. "You are better than them. I'm sure if you just give it a chance, you'll find that Gryffindor will help you to become a better man than Slytherin ever could."_

 _Sirius stared at his cousin in disbelief. No one had ever spoken to him of Slytherin that way before. The way Mother and Father spoke, you would have thought that anyone Sorted into Slytherin was practically royalty. This was the first moment that Sirius ever considered that might not be the case._

" _You think so?" Sirius asked cautiously._

 _Andromeda reached over and wound an arm around his shoulders. "I do," she told him sincerely._

" _But… but_ you're _in Slytherin," he felt the need to point out._

 _Andromeda sighed heavily at that. "I know," she said, her voice dropping an octave. "And sometimes, I feel like I don't belong there either."_

 _Sirius stared wide-eyed up at his cousin, unable to even comprehend what that meant. How could a Black not belong in Slytherin? It didn't make any sense to him._

" _I'm supposed to be in Slytherin," Sirius said stubbornly._

 _Andromeda gave him a sad smile, but didn't say anything else. She simply held him as he struggled to hold back tears, terrified of what his parents were going to think of him now._

At eleven years old, Sirius had felt as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. He had felt like he had let down his entire family. At that time, it had felt like the worst moment of his entire life. It had taken him weeks to finally start to feel at ease amongst the Gryffindors. James had played a big part in that. It had been months before he finally started to realize that he could be his own person, someone that didn't conform to what his parents wanted him to be, but rather someone who could be whatever kind of person they pleased.

But, as the Dementor loomed over him, he couldn't remember that feeling of belonging and happiness he had felt there. He could not remember the feeling of safety and reassurance that had come with Andromeda's arm wound around him protectively. As the Dementor took in another breath, he could only remember the hopeless devastation he had felt as the world as he had known it had been shattered. He had been afraid when he had first been Sorted into Gryffindor. And that fear now seemed magnified to an impossible level.

Finally, everything became too much. Between his exhaustion, dehydration and the hopeless despair that now consumed his every fiber, he couldn't hold on any longer. And with his eleven-year-old self's sobs echoing in his head, he lost all consciousness.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:** Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay with this chapter, I was swept up in a writing competition on a forum for the past month. Thank you for your patience! I'm playing around with formatting a bit with this chapter. Flashbacks are now in italics and imagined voices are bolded. Hopefully it doesn't get too confusing! Please let me know what you think!

* * *

 **Chapter Three**

 _ **November 26, 1981  
Azkaban Prison: Day 25**_

* * *

" _I think you're like James, who would have regarded it as the height of dishonor to mistrust his friends."  
\- Remus Lupin_

* * *

Sirius had taken to pacing.

He would count his steps in order to keep his mind occupied. He could take about four to five steps along the back wall of his cell, depending on the length of his stride. It was about six to seven steps from the back wall to the grated door, though he didn't take that path often since it took him closer to the Dementor that was always floating just outside of the bars. Instead, he did his best to content himself with pacing as far away from the creature as possible.

He found that when he was up and about it was easier to keep his demons at bay.

How long he was able to pace depended mostly on how long ago he had last received food or water. Neither of these things seemed to come to him on a regular schedule of any sort. Some days he would be given two meager servings of food along with a metal cup filled with water and then other days he wouldn't be given anything at all. In the few weeks he had been here he had noticeably lost weight, as his clothes were hanging off of him in a way they hadn't when he had first been delivered to this island. Feeding schedules in the prison seemed to be completely left up to the whims of the Dementors that ran this place. Sirius found to be strange for a myriad of reasons, the most prominent one being the fact that a Dementor bringing him food and water always brought on a confusing mix of terror and relief that Sirius was still struggling with how to cope with.

He stumbled a bit as went to turn around, having just reached one of the walls. He knew that the sleep deprivation wasn't exactly helping matters either. That was his own doing though. He would stay awake for as long as physically possible, until he would unintentionally drift off to sleep, usually sitting up in the corner of the cell rather than on the rickety cot that sat along one wall. His unconscious state was plagued with night terrors though and every single time he'd wake up screaming with tears streaming down his face. Needless to say, he hadn't gotten much sleep over the past few weeks.

All this combined with the Dementors forcing him to recall his worst memories day in and day out was wearing on his sanity.

Sirius abruptly stopped his pacing as he heard a shriek come from a few cells down. For the first couple weeks, he had been relatively isolated up at the top of the prison. But lately, more and more prisoners were being brought in, to the point where he almost had neighbors. He wasn't used to these new noises so close to his cell and he couldn't quite decide if he missed the quiet or not. He hadn't bothered with trying to identify any of the newcomers, hardly seeing why it would matter to him. Still, his curiosity was starting to get the better of him. Was the Ministry finally tracking down actual Death Eaters, or were they still just picking up anyone who looked suspicious and throwing them in prison without asking too many questions?

The screaming suddenly intensified before it abruptly cut off and Sirius knew that the Dementors had intervened. His eyes drifted to the door to find that even the Dementor outside of his own cell had drifted away, obviously drawn by whatever commotion was taking place a few cells down. With that, the air seemed a little more breathable and Sirius almost felt grateful for the newcomer's outburst.

Feeling himself relax a fraction, he leaned up against the wall behind him as his eyes wandered up to the small, barred window that was set high in the back wall of his cell. It had taken him almost a week of imprisonment, but he had finally figured out that there was in fact a subtle deviation in the lighting outside depending on the time of day. The constant thick covering of clouds – which Sirius wasn't convinced was natural – made it difficult to make the distinction between night and day. This only added to the feeling of disorientation and detachment from the rest of the world. Given that, he made it a habit to try and identify the time of day every so often just so he could feel a little less disoriented.

After observing the clouded sky for a minute he decided that it was most likely night. It took him longer than usual to determine that than it usually did though. It was strange, it wasn't quite bright enough to be day but it also seemed a little too bright to be nighttime. Of course, this was using the term "bright" very loosely.

He took a step closer to the window to get a better look. As he observed the sky, he could almost picture the stars that lay just behind the clouds. Astronomy lessons had been instilled in him since he was a child, given their family's fascination with the subject. He knew what constellations would be where, even if he couldn't see them with thick cloud covering. But slowly, something was beginning to dawn on him. Barely visible behind a thinner layer of clouds was an orb of light too large to be a star. It certainly wasn't bright enough to be the sun and it took him a minute before he realized what it was.

It was the full moon.

The realization took his breath away and he stumbled as if suddenly he stood on unstable ground. But now that the idea had occurred to him, there wasn't any doubt in his mind that it was in fact the night of the full moon. After so many years of having his and his friends' lives revolve around that specific celestial event, he practically had a sixth sense for the phases of the moon.

For the past few weeks, he had tried very hard not to think about anything. He had fought tooth and nail against any memories that tried to surface. But, in that moment, memories overwhelmed him uninvited. Even with his Dementor still absent – a curious breech of protocol had Sirius bothered to really pay attention to it – an unwanted memory suddenly consumed him, crystallizing in his mind as it took him back to a time in his life he had never wanted to visit again.

 _Sirius, James and Peter were running full-tilt across the school's grounds as the sun was finally setting behind the forest, casting the area in rapidly lengthening shadows. It was always exhilarating, being outside of the castle after curfew. They had done it on countless occasions over their years as students at Hogwarts. This time was different though._

 _This time they were going to meet a werewolf._

 _As excited as they had been to finally complete their Animagus transformations, the reality of the situation was starting to set in. So many things could go wrong with this plan. It was perhaps one of the most dangerous gambles they would take while at school. Even so, they ran ahead, drowning any fear with giddy anticipation for their next adventure._

 _They had to stop just outside of the reach of the Whomping Willow in order to concentrate on their transformations. As they gained confidence with their Animagus transformation, they would eventually be able to change on the run down to the tree without missing a beat. This first time required more concentration though. Sirius was able to transform first, though admittedly that was only because James waited for Peter to transform, as Peter still needed a little coaching to be able to manage it. Then, they had to wait for Peter to gather up his nerve to challenge the Whomping Willow as a rat. Finally, the three illegal, teenaged Animagi were clamoring through the tunnel under the willow, not giving much thought of what they were about to come upon._

 _Prongs nudged the trap door to the Shrieking Shack open with his antlers. Padfoot was the first one to jump up into the shack, alert as he tried to prepare himself for his first encounter with a werewolf. But then he froze in place, any excitement disappearing in a second. They were early. And the scene that they had just come upon was horrifying._

 _Remus had tried to warn them. He had tried to warn them many times over the years while they worked on their Animagus transformations, but they had never really taken his words seriously. Or maybe he just hadn't been insistent enough. Either way, they hadn't been expecting this._

 _The transformation had clearly just begun. Their friend was on his hands and knees in the middle of the room, his features screwed up in pain. Suddenly there was an unmistakable CRACK of bones rearranging and Remus let out a horrific shriek of pure agony. Sirius heard a whimpering noise that he realized was coming from his own Animagus form, tail tucked between his legs seemingly of its own accord. As they watched the scene it only got worse as Remus' screams grew more frantic, more agonizing, more… animalistic._

 _And all they could do was stand there and stare helplessly. There was nothing they could do to ease their friend's pain._

 _The transformation took much longer than Sirius thought that it would. And it was so much more gruesome than he had ever imagined it would be. At one point, Remus made a choking noise and coughed up blood as his ribcage rearranged. Sirius was convinced that something had to be wrong, that it couldn't really be this bad every single month. But as the months would go on, he would learn just how normal this horrific scene was for a werewolf._

 _It had actually been a relief to finally be face to face with a fully transformed werewolf._

Witnessing that first transformation had been terrifyingly eye-opening. Knowing that there was nothing that they could do to stop it from happening every month had been hard to accept. But at least they had been able to bring him some comfort when they started accompanying him during his transformations, which stopped him from hurting himself so much.

The three of them never once missed a transformation while they had been in school. They went out of their way to avoid detentions the night of the full moon and even on the few occasions that they had slipped up and earn a detention on that particular night, they blew it off even though they knew it would mean more detentions. While they had been in school, this had been the most important thing in their lives.

Then the war began. They had kept up with his transformations for as long as they could. Then they had to miss one because of an assignment Dumbledore sent them on. Then they had to miss another when James had been injured in battle. Then another because they had spent all of their magical energy in a battle the day before and couldn't manage their own transformations. More and more they just didn't have time to accompany their werewolf. Eventually Remus became distant.

 _ **You abandoned me.**_

Sirius whipped around on pure instinct. He already knew that no one would be there though. He had been hearing James' voice off and on over the past few weeks, pointing out every mistake that he had ever made. This was definitely not James' voice though. More than that, this voice had been so clear and so convincing that he found himself searching the dark corners of his cell for a figure that was not there.

Not even a month in Azkaban and Sirius Black could already feel his mind slipping.

 _ **I needed you, and you abandoned me.**_

"Remus…" Sirius whispered, his voice hoarse from disuse. "Merlin, I'm so sorry…"

When it had become clear that they had a traitor amongst them, everyone had come under suspicion. It became hard to trust anyone; even the closest of friends were being questioned. Every relationship was examined and every member of the Order became a suspect. The Marauders were not immune to this. Even more so when it became apparent that it was probably someone within their own inner circle that was likely the informant. When Remus became distant, he inadvertently became the easy answer. So Sirius had turned to Peter when he had needed aid in his plan to keep James and his family hidden. It had seemed like the safe choice.

That had been a horrible mistake.

"Remus, if I could take it back, I would," Sirius moaned. "Merlin, I wish I could take it back. I wish I could go back in time and fix this."

 _ **You didn't trust me! If you had just trusted me, none of this would have happened!**_

"I know," Sirius whispered. He leaned back against the wall behind him, suddenly not feeling like he could hold himself up any longer. He rubbed both hands over his weary face. "I was so thick. I should have known…"

Looking back, it had been obvious who the actual traitor among them was. The signs were all there, if he had just been smart enough to really look for them instead of just settling on the easy answer. He shouldn't have looked at Remus' distance as suspicious, but instead the logical reaction when a person didn't get the help they needed with a terrible part of their life.

 _ **I am alone now… because of you.**_

Sirius leaned over as if he were going to be physically ill. With his one decision to trust Peter, he had successfully shattered all of the lives around him. His decision hadn't only ended in the loss of both James and Lily – orphaning their child – but also the abandonment of their last closest friend. He had destroyed so many lives that night.

His eyes wandered back to the window. The full moon was obviously high in the sky. The transformation probably had already happened hours ago. Sirius wondered where Remus was right now. Most likely he was in the reinforced basement of the small cottage that he lived in. He knew from years of experience that Remus' stress made for a more violent wolf. He could only imagine how terrible this particular full moon was going to be for Remus. It would probably be one of the worst that he ever had to endure. Sirius shuddered at the thought of the wolf tearing apart his friend. Was there even anyone left to help tend to his wounds when he woke up?

For the first time since he had been locked up, Sirius wished for some connection to the outside world. He wished he could explain to Remus what really happened. Why hadn't he demanded to speak with Remus before they brought him here? In truth, he knew he had been in shock and in no fit state to have been making logical decisions at the time… but that seemed so trivial in this moment. Surely, if he had been able to explain to Remus that he had not betrayed them, it would bring his friend some small piece of mind.

Wouldn't it?

Or perhaps it didn't matter. Perhaps Remus wouldn't care that technically Sirius had not been the one to betray James and Lily. Perhaps he would blame him anyway. Just like Sirius blamed himself. It felt like there was a hole opening up in the middle of Sirius' chest once more at these thoughts. Because after all… this was all his fault.

 _ **And they say you're nothing like the rest of your family.**_

"No!" Sirius practically shouted, his hands going to his ears as if he could block out the imaginary voice of his once close friend. "No, I… I didn't mean to. I never wanted this to happen!"

 _ **You thought you could be different, didn't you? You thought that you could be better than them. But in the end, you couldn't help but turn out just like them. You couldn't help but hurt everyone around you.**_

"I…" Sirius started before he realized there was nothing he could say to that.

 _ **Voldemort almost won because of you.**_

Sirius' knees gave out and suddenly he was on the floor, despair crashing over him in crushing waves. His breath caught in his chest, choking him. His eyes stung, though he was too dehydrated to produce any tears.

Suddenly there was screaming. It wasn't one of the other prisoners this time. It was a sound that he had heard more times than he would care to remember, seeming to echo around his empty cell. It was Remus' screaming as he forcibly transformed into a blood-thirsty werewolf. Sirius could clearly hear the crack of bones breaking and the scrape of them rearranging. He could hear the pain and terror in his friends screams that grew more animalistic by the second. Sirius pushed his hands harder against his ears even though he knew it wasn't helping.

You couldn't block out what was in your own head.

In a desperate and futile attempt to drown out the noise, Sirius' own screams filled the cell. By the time the Dementors came to subdue him, he was already almost unconscious from the force of his exertions. He didn't fight the Dementor as it approached nor did he shrink away as its hooded head leaned down toward him. Instead he welcomed the intrusion, turning his head up toward the creature, knowing that his body couldn't handle much more and that blissful unconsciousness wouldn't be far behind.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

 _ **December 22nd, 1981  
Azkaban Prison: Day 51**_

* * *

 _"The Dark Lord will rise again, Crouch! Throw us into Azkaban; we will wait! He will rise again and will come for us, he will reward us beyond any of his other supporters! We alone were faithful! We alone tried to find him!"_

— _Bellatrix Lestrange_

* * *

For a prison that's main purpose was to isolate its prisoners, Azkaban had been quite active over the past few weeks.

Even Sirius found himself drawn out of the dark corners of his cell each day in order to see what was going on outside of his cell. New prisoners were being brought in several days in a row in small packs, all of them screaming and struggling the whole way. It caused quite a commotion within these walls. It wasn't that Azkaban was ever really a quiet place. It was more that most of the prisoners here had resigned themselves to their sentences and only really cried out while they slept or when the Dementors got close. These new prisoners brought with them an entirely different energy.

They were Voldemort's loyal supporters.

Sirius could recognize Death Eaters as they were brought up to his level. These were men and women that he had fought on a regular basis for years. He had been in duels with many of them, sought to lock them away himself. It was a strange sort of grim satisfaction to watch them getting locked away at long last. It was something that he had never imagined he would witness from this perspective.

For a while, the delivery of new prisoners became the most reliable method to tell the passage of time. Every day around noon, three or four new souls would enter the prison. This was much more predictable than even the delivery of food and water to the prisoners who were already locked up. Then, very abruptly, new inmates stopped appearing. It seemed to be a safe assumption that outside of these walls the manhunt for Death Eaters had ended.

So, when the commotion started down on the lower levels after over a week of no new appearances, Sirius felt taken a little off guard. He thought about ignoring it, but soon it became apparent that something was different about what was happening. He started to push himself up to his feet, even though he knew that it would be awhile before they made it up to the top of the prison, if that was indeed where they were headed. Standing was a bit of a chore for him after being inactive for so long though, so Sirius knew he needed extra time just to be able to stand steadily on his feet.

By the time the group reached the upper level, Sirius was feeling pretty steady. He took a cautious step forward, careful to keep a safe distance from the Dementor outside of his door. He also didn't want to move too far out of the shadows, feeling a sense of safety in not being able to be seen by the new prisoners as they were brought past. He had avoided being recognized after his initial ascent in the prison and he preferred to keep it that way.

The first thing that Sirius noticed was that this group was by far the most rowdy that had been brought in. These new prisoners were all struggling and shouting, their voices echoing around the prison and causing other inmates to shout back as they rattled the bars to their cells. It was enough of a commotion to cause Sirius to take another cautious, half step forward, feeling curious.

The first person who was dragged by was a male, hardly more than a boy – though Sirius was vaguely aware of the fact that the same could be said about him. This new inmate was struggling and as he looked around wildly, Sirius could see tears on his face. Clearly he was terrified, but that was a pretty normal thing to see of new prisoners. He looked vaguely familiar as well, but had disappeared from view before Sirius could really identify him. He could clearly hear his desperate pleas though.

"I didn't do it! I swear, I didn't do it! Please, you have to believe me! I didn't do it, I didn't know!"

Sirius snorted lightly. The boy must be desperate if he was trying to reason with Dementors. Still, he couldn't help but wonder if what he said was true. After all, he wouldn't be the first innocent person to be thrown in Azkaban.

Sirius refocused when another figure was brought by. This figure was older than the last and was also struggling, but not in fear as the first had been. This one was struggling in anger. He was shouting in a very animalistic way, his words unintelligible save for a few profanities. Sirius had definitely seen him before, but he couldn't for the life of him recall where. They may have gone to school together judging by the fact that he only seemed a little older than the man who had come before him, but with the violent struggling it was hard to get a good look at his face.

The third new prisoner that came into view was older than the first two and much quieter as he walked by with a grim resolution to his gait. It was obviously a figure that he accepted his fate. As he passed, he lifted his head, turning it toward Sirius' cell. Sirius got a real good look at his face, and he felt his whole body go cold. He immediately recognized his features. It was Rodolphus Lestrange.

His breath caught in his chest at this realization as he balled his hands into tight fists. He had met the elder Lestrange in battle several times over the years. And he was never without his wife: Sirius' cousin Bellatrix.

Given that, it was no surprise that the final figure that came into view was a distinctly feminine one. She was screaming obscenities in a high pitched, grating tone that had always rattled Sirius' nerves, even when he was young. It was a noise that immediately caused blood to start pounding in his head and all of his muscles to tense as if anticipating an attack. There were two Dementors attempting to drag his cousin along by her arms and she was struggling fiercely against them. That was quite a feat considering the effect that the Dementors had on most people. By this point, most people were too drained to fight back. In the midst of her struggles, her head whipped to one side and suddenly she was looking right at him.

It was as if the world had stopped in its tracks.

For a solid minute, the two were deathly still as they locked gazes. Sirius realized that he had ventured further from the shadows than he normally did, drawn somehow by this new group of prisoners, and he was clearly visible to his cousin. Recognition sparked in her eyes followed by a slow smile making its way across her lips.

"Well, hello, dear cousin," Bellatrix finally said in a low, amused voice. "Fancy seeing you here." She paused as if expecting some sort of response. Two months ago, he would have had some sort of comeback for her, but already the idea of conversation felt foreign to him. So he stood silent, content to glare at his hated relative. Looking back, Sirius would wonder why the Dementors had allowed her to linger for so long. "By the way, the Longbottoms send their love. Or at least they would… if only I hadn't turned their brains into mush." She cracked a wide grin.

Sirius felt something within him snap. Suddenly, without a conscious thought, he lunged forward so quickly that neither Bellatrix nor the Dementors had a chance to react. His hand shot through the bars of his cell and he seized a fistful of Bellatrix's sleeve, yanking it toward him with enough force to practically pull Bellatrix off her feet. With both her wrists and ankles confined in shackles, she was thrown completely off balance and her head collided solidly with the bars of his cell door with a satisfying TWONK. As she screamed in pain, blood now streaming down her face, Sirius felt the beginnings of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

The Dementor dragged her away as Sirius watched, feeling a spark of satisfaction within him. As she was pushed into the cell next to his, he could still hear her screams, though the sound had shifted from pain to outrage. He was so distracted that he didn't immediately notice the Dementor turning toward him.

Sirius felt the Dementor's close proximity before he saw it. He knew what his mistake had been immediately. He knew the Dementors didn't care about violence within the prison. Last week, a fight had broken out between two of the new prisoners as they were brought in. The Dementors hadn't bothered to intervene until one of the prisoners was knocked unconscious. But, Sirius had taken pleasure in causing Bellatrix pain, and the Dementor was eager to take that feeling away from him.

After almost two months of imprisonment, Sirius knew that struggling didn't do any good. Instead, he backed up as calmly as he could; trying to let any positive feelings fall away, inviting in the dread that came with a Dementor's visit. He had a theory that being afraid of the Dementors could work in his favor, giving the creatures less to feed off of. However, as the Dementor entered his cell, he realized how flimsy a theory that was.

He thought that over time he would begin to get used to the effect the Dementors had on him. But, if anything, it seemed to be getting worse. Sirius backed himself into the far corner of the small cell, and when he couldn't retreat any further he crouched down, trying to make himself as small as possible. None of this did any good, but it at least gave him the vague sense that he could do something about his situation.

His entire body shuttered as the Dementor towered over him.

" _Remus, look out!"_

His own voice echoed around the cell even though he hadn't spoken. His closed his eyes, knowing what memory was coming and fighting hard against it. He didn't want to think, he didn't want to remember. But he was powerless to stop it as suddenly the walls of his prison cell melted away and he found himself in another time and place.

 _Sirius saw what Remus didn't. In the middle of their battle with a group of Death Eaters, Bellatrix had singled Remus out, flinging a curse at him while he was distracted dueling one of her companions. Sirius shouted at him as he jumped between one of his best friends and his cousin. The curse that had been meant for Remus hit Sirius hard and he felt something pierce his chest._

" _Bellatrix, we have to go!" Rodolphus shouted._

 _Sirius remained firmly and stubbornly on his feet through sheer force of will, his wand arm up but wavering. He met Bellatrix's mad look with a hard glare of his own. Bellatrix laughed loudly. Then, there was a deafening CRACK and she was gone. Several more cracks followed as her companions followed suit._

 _It was only after they were gone that Sirius let his wand arm drop. Everything was moving in slow motion as the pain in his chest was radiating to an unimaginable level. He reached up to feel the wound, his fingers encountering a small, thin but very solid object that was lodged in his chest, roughly the size of the stem of a quill. He was vaguely surprised that such a small object could cause so much pain. His knees gave way and suddenly his kneecaps were hitting the ground hard as he gasped raggedly for breath._

" _Sirius!"_

 _His body was falling forward but suddenly there were hands on his shoulders trying to steady him. He looked up into James' panicked face. He tried to smirk and make some kind of joke but he was hardly getting enough air as it was._

" _Oh, Merlin…" Lily's voice was close by now, sounding unsteady. That was his first real indication of how bad off he was. It wasn't easy to rattle Lily Potter._

" _We need to heal him before I can Apparate with him," James said tensely. Taking charge of a situation was how he coped when things got out of hand. Slowly, he lowered Sirius down to lie on the ground, causing Sirius to groan in pain. "At the very least we have to get that thing out of his chest and slow the bleeding. Moony, what do we do?" There was silence. "Remus?"_

 _James shifted to look behind him, and as he did Sirius caught sight of Remus. He seemed frozen in place and was pale as a ghost as he stared down at Sirius with wide eyes, his expression one of utmost shock._

 _Sirius took in a rattling breath. He remembered thinking that Remus' behavior was very strange. He had never been squeamish before. It wasn't until later that Sirius would learn that Remus had been shaken to his very core by the idea of one of his friends getting killed because of his own carelessness._

 _James glanced at Sirius before he was suddenly on his feet. Without hesitation, Lily took James' place at Sirius' side, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder as her green eyes anxiously took in his injuries._

" _Keep still, Sirius," she said, clearly struggling to keep her voice calm. "It's going to be all right."_

 _Behind her, James had forcibly turned Remus away from the scene, his hands on Remus' shoulders as he met his eyes. "I need you to focus, Remus," he said steadily. "Just take a deep breath and think. Just tell us what needs to be done to get him patched up enough to Apparate him out of here."_

 _Sirius tried to shift to get a better look at what was going on, but all the action did was cause his pain to pulsate, a pained yelp escaping from his lips before he was able to clamp his teeth together._

" _I… I…" Remus stuttered, his head starting to turn back to the scene that was now hidden behind him._

" _Hey," James said firmly as he reached up and turned Remus' chin so that he was facing him again. "Focus on me, Moony. Just tell me what we need to do."_

 _Sirius' grasp on consciousness was flimsy as best, but he was vaguely aware of Remus mumbling instructions while Lily performed the spells. The pain eased before it sored to a whole new level and then eased again to a dull throb. He must have lost a lot of blood though, because even as Lily stood up after doing all she could, the world was still spinning around him._

 _In the next moment James was back at his side. He pulled Sirius up into a sitting position, causing Sirius to hiss with pain as his vision swam even more. James wound one arm around Sirius' shoulders and pulled him in close. Sirius' head lolled into James' shoulder as his muscles relaxed, quite literally trusting James with his life._

" _I've got you, Sirius," James murmured. "I've got you, brother. Just hang in there."_

 _The words echoed in his head as Sirius's eyes fluttered closed. A moment later he felt the familiar pull of Apparation just as the world slipped away from him._

Sirius gasped as he violently jerked back to reality. The Dementor was gone, not sticking around long enough to render him unconscious this time. His entire body was shaking and he was drenched in a cold sweat.

He remembered that day too vividly. It had been just after they had graduated from Hogwarts, back at the very beginning of their involvement in the war. Lily and James had barely been married at week at the time. Normal couples would have been away on their honeymoon, but Lily and James had refused to leave their friends, always saying they would have a honeymoon after the war was over.

Sirius knew why that had been the memory to overtake him today. Bellatrix being brought in had brought back the awful memories of the war. It was the first time he really had to face his own mortality, as he had been certain that he was going to die that day. But that wasn't what was most painful about the memory. No, what was most painful about that particular memory was James. Remembering the way James could take control of a dire situation. Remembering how James had saved his life that day by calming Remus so that he could tell them what needed to be done. Remembering how much James had cared for his friends.

" _I've got you, Sirius. I've got you, brother."_

Those words tore away at his soul, even more so than the memory of his own near death experience. It wasn't fair. James had so much more to live for. Why couldn't he have lived, why couldn't Sirius have taken his place and been the one to sacrifice himself? Sirius felt the pain of the loss of his surrogate brother more intensely than ever, the weight of it threatening to crush him while at the same time refusing to end his misery.

He leaned his head up against the wall behind him, trying to catch his breath even though it felt like he was breathing through a straw. He put his hands up over his head and lowered his head to hang between his knees, attempting to gain some kind of composure.

He felt a horrible feeling of helplessness descend over him. This was his life from now on. He would never have anything more than this. He would never be anything more than a tortured soul in a cell. He had known that from the beginning, but somehow it was like he was only just realizing what that actually meant. He was only two months into his life sentence and he could already feel himself starting to break.

Sirius Black was twenty-two years old. His life was supposed to only be starting. But instead, it had been unjustly ripped away from him.

He swallowed as he leaned back again, his breath feeling steadier. But it was as if a hole had opened up within his chest, threatening to consume his entire being. He couldn't live like this. He couldn't do this every day for the rest of his life.

"Why couldn't they have just killed me?" Sirius whispered to himself. He wasn't really sure if he was talking about the Death Eaters or the Ministry. But it really didn't matter. There was only one thought that rang clearly out in his mind.

He wished with ever fiber of his being that he were dead.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Thank you to everyone who has reviewed so far! I really appreciate all your feedback!


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

 _ **January 3rd, 1982  
Azkaban Prison: Day 62**_

* * *

 _"They don't need walls and water to keep the prisoners in, not when they're trapped inside their own heads, incapable of a single cheerful thought. Most go mad within weeks."  
\- Remus Lupin_

* * *

 _Sirius was still smirking at the vampire that had lost all it's teeth as he stepped up to face the boggart, drawing his wand easily out of his pocket. He glanced back at his friends behind him, grinning and confident without a care in the world. James grinned back as he ran a hand through his messy hair, though Remus and Peter were both shifting uneasily._

 _Sirius turned back to the boggart in front of him, belatedly wondering what it would turn in to when it focused on him. He couldn't think of anything that he was really afraid of. But as the boggart morphed, he realized the answer should have been obvious from the beginning. He had been thinking along the lines of a normal thirteen-year-old child's fears, like those that had just been paraded in front of the class – spiders, snakes, mummies, vampires. He wasn't afraid of anything like that. What he was truly afraid of was something that was much more real and terrifying than any of those things._

 _He was suddenly face to face with his mother._

 _The likeness was so uncanny that Sirius froze in place, wondering if it really was his mother standing in front of him in the middle of his third year Defense Against the Dark Arts class. His smirk had immediately fallen from his face as he automatically straightened his spine. Any residual laughter from the boggart's previous form had faded away and for a moment the entire room was silent as Walburga Black's likeness surveyed her surroundings in a very convincing way._

" _Any day now, Mr. Black," Professor Ward drawled._

 _Sirius gripped his wand. He took a deep breath and raised his arm. But, before he could utter a word, his mother's eyes locked on him. He suddenly felt cold and took an involuntary step backward._

" _Vile creature," his mother spat at him. Sirius flinched as if the insult had been a physical attack. "You bring nothing but dishonor on the House of Black!"_

" _Riddikulus," came a murmured voice from behind him. "The spell is pronounced Riddikulus."_

" _No helping, Mr. Lupin," Professor Ward snapped. "Five points from Gryffindor. Mr. Black, perform the spell. We don't have all day."_

 _Sirius opened his mouth but his throat had gone completely dry. His hand tightened on his wand to the point where his knuckles turned stark white._

" _Worthless!" Walburga Black screeched. "You are worthless! You bring nothing but shame and disappointment to all those who have the unfortunate task of dealing with you!" The figure was suddenly advancing on him and Sirius stumbled backwards._

" _He's had enough!" came James' voice from somewhere behind him, all signs of joking completely gone._

" _Stay back, Potter," Professor Ward growled._

" _You will never be anything without this family!" Walburga shouted. "You insolent, cowardly blood traitor! I am ashamed to have to call you son!" A hand with fingers tipped in long, pointed nails was raised in the air and Sirius closed his eyes, knowing what was coming._

 _But suddenly, someone had grabbed him by the back of his robes and had yanked him backward, away from the figure towering over him. He blinked, unsure what was going on as someone slipped in front of him. It took him a moment to focus on James, who was now standing between him and the boggart. A moment later there was a loud CRACK as the boggart also refocused on this new presence._

 _As Professor Ward was doling out detentions for disrupting his lesson – to James for jumping between Sirius and the boggart and to Remus for pulling Sirius out of the way – Sirius could hear confused whispers come from his classmates. He even heard some snickers coming from the Slytherin side of the room. His cheeks burned red with embarrassment over the whole ordeal. No one was supposed to know about that and now his failed relationship with his mother had been put on display for the entire class to see._

 _But that was where it should have ended._

 _Suddenly the protection of his friends vanished. The snickers from the Slytherins became louder and more cruel, pressing in around him._

" _Stupid boy." His mother's form was back, towering over him and looking even more monstrous and threatening than before. "Stupid, selfish boy. You destroy everything you come in contact with. You never deserved happiness, which is why everyone you've ever loved is gone. And you will now be alone forever!"_

 _And with that, she lunged at him, her fingers turning into claws, her eyes burning with pure hatred. Sirius tried to scramble away but there was no where to run, no where to hide…_

He woke with a start, jerking away from the perceived threat, which caused him to fall from the stiff, uncomfortable cot onto the rock hard floor. He groaned lowly as pain radiated from his shoulder where it had collided with the stone floor. He blinked furiously as he looked around, trying to get his bearings. He didn't know where he was.

He gasped, trying to contain his panic. That was easier said than done though. His heart was pumping wildly out of control, pounding blood in his ears and somehow managing to drown out even the thoughts within his own head. His vision was fading in and out of focus so rapidly that nausea was overwhelming him. He gagged, but nothing came up. This caused him to panic even more. He gasped desperately, but it felt as if he were trying to breathe through a straw. What was going on? Was he dying?

Slowly, his senses finally started coming back to him. There was the cold floor and then the musty smell and the small, dark room. And finally there was screaming. For a moment, Sirius wondered if it was him that was screaming. He reached up and felt his own mouth, finding that his lips were closed. He wasn't the one screaming.

Finally, memories started flooding back to him. It was enough to take his breathe away as he rolled over onto his back, staring up at the ceiling as he tried to calm himself. That was hard to do with the commotion going on outside of his cell. He let out a frustrated sigh as he pushed himself up into a sitting position, leaning back up against the cot to keep himself steady.

He had been having episodes like this with increasing frequency over the past couple weeks. He couldn't sleep without nightmares and more and more when he woke from these nightmares he wouldn't immediately remember where he was, causing him to blindly panic. This was the longest it had taken him to remember where he was. He squeezed his eyes shut as he let his head fall into his hands.

It was only going to keep getting worse. How was he supposed to live like this for the rest of his life?

The screaming that was coming from outside of his cell was getting louder and more panicked. Sirius shifted his hands to cover his ears, but that didn't seem to help much.

"For the love of Merlin, Barty, will you SHUT UP?"

Sirius wasn't real sure who had shouted the statement – probably one of the Lestrange brothers if he had to guess – but he found that he was inclined to agree. The young inmate was screaming in his sleep again, begging for his mother. Over the past month, it had become clear that his high pitched screaming could go on for hours, grating on the nerves of anyone within earshot. Not that that was very hard to do. It's not as if any of them were the most stable of individuals at this point.

"They should just let us kill him," came Bellatrix's helpful suggestion. For the most part, her tone sounded bored, but Sirius could hear the slight tremor in her voice. He couldn't help but smile slightly at that. After about a month here, the Dementors were finally starting to get to his cousin. That was comforting to him. "The boy is a disgrace."

Sirius snorted, lifting his head. "It's not as if _you_ are the most dignified when _you're_ the one screaming in your sleep, Bellatrix," he spoke up, aiming the comment at the wall across from him.

He knew that Bellatrix sat just on the other side of that wall. For the first couple days of her imprisonment, she had spent most of her time shouting at him, trying to get a rise out of him. She had almost succeeded when she had gone on about how she had been given a trial before her sentence while he had not. That fact really got under his skin as he found himself often regretting that he hadn't fought harder for his own freedom. But he had managed to restrain himself from verbally responding to his mad cousin. He hadn't engaged her for weeks, knowing that she was simply trying to distract herself from the horror that she now found herself in and refusing to aid her in that endeavor.

But, eventually the urge for some kind of human contact – even if it was simply being able to argue with someone he truly hated – became too much for him.

"You're one to talk, dear cousin," Bellatrix snapped. "I haven't heard you sound that pathetic since you were a young, stupid boy who was deathly terrified of mummy and daddy."

"Don't be ridiculous," Sirius shot back dryly. "I was never afraid of my father."

That was the truth too. He had never particularly liked his father, but he had never been as frightening as his mother had been.

"Yes, well, most of the men in this family have been little more than pretty decorations in the foyer," Bellatrix commented.

Suddenly, there was movement from outside of his cell. As his gaze darted toward the door, he couldn't help but shrink away. But the door did not open. Instead, the scraping of a cell door opening came from a different cell.

"No… no, please!" Suddenly Bellatrix's screams joined with Barty's. Clearly she was getting a visit from a Dementor.

A ghost of a smile played at Sirius' lips. "Having a fond memory of your husband, Bella?" he taunted.

If she heard him, she made no indication. Sirius took a deep breath and tried not to focus on the screams of his hated cousin. He had learned early on that taking pleasure is his cousin's misery would earn himself a Dementor visit of his own. He put his head down and let his hands rest on the back of his neck, lacing his fingers together. He tried to pretend he was somewhere else, anywhere else. He wasn't successful.

"Can I have your attention please?"

It took a solid minute for the words to make any sense to Sirius. It took another minute to realize that, though the tone sounded nervous, it sounded too coherent to be an inmate here. Something was strange about this new voice; something was different. It was enough to cause Sirius to lift his head and look over at the cell curiously.

"Please, can I have everyone's attention?" The request came louder and decidedly more insistent. But it did nothing to quiet the chaos from the inmates in the prison. Bellatrix's screams became more panicked, Barty's screams were deteriorating into hysteric sobs and there was depressed moaning coming several in the nearby cells.

Driven by curiosity, Sirius placed his hands up on the cot behind him and used that to leverage himself up onto the cot. From there he was able to carefully pull himself up onto his feet. He wavered for a moment before he was able move forward. It was a rare occurrence that he would move toward the front of his cell as usually he stayed as far away from the door – and the Dementors – as possible. He did his best to get only as close as he needed to in order to see out and around the Dementor that was posted just outside of his cell.

From his spot, he could see a man standing on the path a few cells down. It was immediately clear that he was not an inmate. There were no Dementors that were accompanying him and he seemed for all intents and purposes to be standing within the prison of his own free will. It was perhaps one of the strangest sights Sirius had seen in his entire life. He couldn't help but stare, unable to comprehend what was going on.

"Please, I just… I need to ask…" the man spoke again loudly, clearly frustrated by the lack of attention from the half-crazed prisoners.

"We're a bit hectic right now," Sirius found himself saying. "Perhaps you should come back another time." Then he laughed, the sound much more maniacal than he had meant it to be. He realized that he sounded just as unhinged as anyone else in this place.

He wasn't willing to admit that it was because he was in fact just as unhinged as any of the other prisoners here.

The man focused on Sirius, the only one who had acknowledged his presence at this point. He glanced down at a clipboard in his hand and then back up at something above Sirius' cell. Then he focused back on him.

"Sirius Black, right?" he said, stepping closer. As he did, something strange happened. The Dementor moved away from the man, which meant he moved farther away from Sirius' cell. Sirius watched this was a vague fascination, almost forgetting about the presence of the newcomer. "Sirius Black?" the man repeated, drawing Sirius' attention back to him. "You were one of You-Know-Who's most loyal supporters, weren't you?"

"That's what they tell me," Sirius said flatly. He carefully stepped forward, his eyes wandering back to the Dementor, half expecting it to be drawn back to him. But it stayed where it was.

"I am here by order of the Council of Magical Law," he said, sounding very pompous for a man standing in a prison among people who were quite literally losing their minds. "I have come to offer leniency to anyone who will agree to testify against others who may have been loyal to You-Know-Who. If you would be willing to give us names of followers that may still be at large, we will be willing to discuss reducing your sentence."

Sirius stared blankly at the man. This must have gone on for longer than what was normal, because the man was soon shifting uncomfortably under his gaze.

"Do you have any names that you think would be useful to the Council?" the man finally prompted, sounding a bit uncertain.

Sirius felt the corner of his mouth pulling upwards, though the action didn't quite feel like a smile so much as a grimace. It must have resulted in a disturbing facial expression, because the man took a step backwards. But Sirius felt encouraged by the fact that the Dementor stayed where it was, so he took another step forward, threading his arms through the bars right above one of the horizontal supports and leaning on the metal.

"You think I have names of Voldemort's followers for you?" he asked in a low, almost dangerous voice. The man flinched. Sirius cocked his head, his gaze unwavering as he stared at the man.

"I-if you were willing to testify…" the man stuttered. "We… we would be willing… to discuss…"

A very strange noise came out of Sirius' mouth, cutting the man off. It was somewhere between a laugh and a scream and he wasn't quite sure which way it was leaning. He couldn't identify the emotions he was feeling. Amused that this man had come to probably the one innocent person on this level of the prison looking for information on Voldemort? No, that wasn't quite it. Horrified that someone was asking him of all people, really driving home the reason he was here? That's wasn't really it either.

He didn't remember the man walking away, giving up on him and going to other prisoners with his pleas. Later he would learn that Igor Karkaroff was the only one who took the man up on his offer. He would return hardly a day later to much ridicule from Voldemort's supporters, but several days later he would be granted his release for his cooperation.

That day, though, Sirius felt sanity slipping away from him. He wasn't even aware when the Dementor approached him again as he was still hanging on the cell door. The creature grabbed his arms, but Sirius gave no reaction as he continued carrying on with his laughing, screaming fit. The Dementor leaned down close to him and inhaled. A whirl of unpleasant memories crashed over him, and though it was enough to sober his fit, he was somehow able to remain on his feet as he leaned heavily on the cell door.

For a moment he wondered if the Dementors were having less of an effect on him. Weeks ago, being this close to a Dementor would have rendered him unconscious. But then he realized what had changed. It wasn't that they weren't having an effect on him. It was that they had less to feed off of from him.

"I have nothing left for you to take from me," Sirius mumbled hoarsely, staring down at the floor as he allowed the painful memories to wash over him. He closed his eyes, feeling empty. "I have nothing left."


	6. Chapter 6

_**Author's Note**_ _ **:**_ Okay, so this chapter was a bit difficult to write and I'm really hoping that what I was trying to do comes across relatively coherently. Pay close attention to the italicized text vs. the non-italicized text to keep track of what is real and what is not. And keep in mind that the lines between the two are beginning to blur. Please don't forget to review and let me know what you think!

* * *

 **Chapter Six**

 _ **July 12, 1982  
Azkaban Prison: Day 253**_

* * *

" _Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself…soulless and evil. You'll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life."  
\- Remus Lupin_

* * *

James' eyes had been open when he found him dead in the entryway of his home. His glasses had fallen off and skidded away at some point during his final confrontation, leaving his hazel eyes looking more naked and vulnerable than usual. Pupils were fixed and dilated. He had seemed frozen in the moment that he realized he was going to die, his eyes wide and his features set in a look of surprise and fear.

James had been afraid to die.

"No… no… p-please…"

" _They're a bunch of cheats!" James was raging, angrier than Sirius had ever seen him before._

 _Sirius was looking up at James from where he lay on the ground, in immense pain from a shattered shoulder and a concussion from two simultaneous cheap shots on the Quiddich Pitch. To this day, Sirius can't quite recall exactly what had happened, only that he had been knocked clear off his broom, and if not for James' quick thinking to swoop in and grab the back of his robes before he hit the ground, he could have been much worse off._

 _Through his blurred vision, Sirius could see several of their teammates holding James back from storming across the field to where the Slytherin team was gathered. Outrage was flowing off of him in waves. "No way was any of that legal! We should have a rematch!"_

" _The mini Black caught the Snitch before Hooch blew the whistle," came a depressed voice._

" _And I suppose he wasn't at all concerned that his bloody teammates could have killed his brother with that dangerous play!" James shouted so that he could be heard clearly by the Slytherins gathering on the other side of the Pitch. "They could have broken his neck if he hadn't swerved at the last second!"_

Memories overwhelmed him in a rush, so much so that he couldn't tell one memory from another – _James nudged him in the Great Hall after a successful prank as they both laughed_ – as they all blended together. At eleven years old, James had become family to Sirius – _"You are not like the rest of your family mate. You are better than them. You don't need them. You've got us."_ – more so than his own biological family had ever been to him growing up. They were brothers not by something as accidental blood – _"I've got you, Sirius. I've got you, brother."_ –but by choice. Sirius always found that to be a more powerful bond than any he had ever had before.

Sirius gasped like a drowning man. Why was it suddenly so hard to breath?

Lily's eyes had been closed when he had found her. He could suddenly see that in painful clarity. At a glance, it could have been said that she looked like she was simply sleeping. But the longer he had looked at her, the more unnatural the scene seemed. There was a tension in her features, frozen there from her last moments. She had lay sprawled on the floor of the nursery, her last act in life to try and protect her infant son.

The silence in that room when Sirius had stood there, staring down at her lifeless body, had been horrific, seeming to push in on him from all sides. Hagrid had already taken Harry away, refusing to give the child to his godfather. Looking back, Sirius figured that was probably for the best. How could he possibly take care of a baby? How could he possibly be good enough to care for the child when it was his fault his parents were dead?

Sirius was aware of water hitting his hands before he was aware that he was crying.

A small voice in the back of his head told him that he could have done it. If Hagrid had handed Harry over to Sirius, he would not have walked into that house with the child. He would not have seen James and Lily's bodies, would not have taken off in a rage, ready to murder the person who had done this to them. Perhaps it would have been the motivation he would have needed to fight for his freedom and clear his name. However, that small voice dulled in comparison to the one that told him that he could never be a good enough parent to James and Lily's son.

He hoped that Dumbledore had found a good home for Harry to grow up in. Perhaps Remus had taken him in. That was a comforting thought. It was quickly stolen away from him though and replaced with the image of Lily Potter's dead form. Comforting thoughts were fleeting in this place.

The Killing Curse was a funny thing. There was no blood, no gruesome dismemberment; it left no real trace of what had killed the person. Yet, as he could clearly see Lily's dead form in his mind's eye, it was painfully obvious that there was nothing left but an empty shell, the soul and spirit that had made up his friend was completely gone.

Sirius choked on a sob as he buried his head in his arms.

Lily and Sirius hadn't gotten off to the best start – _"Black, you arrogant git!"_ – in the early years of school. _"Evans, you are looking particularly hostile today."_ But by the time they had graduated, they had formed a bond that was unique from any of the other Marauders. Sirius and Lily understood complications with family better than the others, and that was something that had brought them together and helped them to forge a strong friendship. By the end, she was as much family to him as James was.

" _She… she calls me a freak," Lily said quietly, her voice shaking. A single tear streaked down her cheek. Annoyed, she brushed it away. "I know I shouldn't let it bother me."_

" _It's hard not to, though," Sirius finished. "When someone's supposed to love and care for you unconditionally, it's hard to tell yourself that it's not anything you've done."_

 _Lily nodded. "I always thought that she would get used to the idea," she went on. "I understand that she was confused and upset when I first got my Hogwarts letter, but I thought that over time she would learn to be okay with it. But she's only gotten worse. We used to be close, you know? And now we've never been more distant." She paused. Then she went on, speaking so softly that Sirius had to lean in to hear her properly. "Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I had refused the invitation to go to school here."_

 _After a minute of silence, Sirius finally spoke. "I sometimes wonder what my life would be like if I had demanded that the Sorting Hat put me in Sytherin," he told her._

" _Really?" Lily asked._

 _Sirius nodded solemnly. "And while that would have made my family happy, I would have been miserable." He paused to let the thought sink in. "Just like you would have been if you had never come to Hogwarts."_

"STOP!" Sirius suddenly shouted. "Stop it, just please stop it!"

It was bad enough to be plagued by his unpleasant memories. But more and more he found that he was also haunted by memories that he used to have pleasant associations with. That had been the memory of the night that his friendship with Lily had started, when they had first opened up to each other and learned that they were more alike than they had thought. But he couldn't look back on that memory with fondness anymore. Just like any of his other memories that involved his friends, they all cut him with the reminder of what he had lost.

And he couldn't help but believe that the moment that anyone decided to be his friend was the moment that they doomed themselves to their terrible fate.

" _Miss Evans came to see me. She's concerned about you."_

" _Concerned about me, Professor McGonagall?"_

" _As I understand it, there was an incident in Diagon Alley this past summer?"_

"No! Please! Just make it stop!" Sirius shouted.

"It's never going to stop!" Sirius was pretty sure that statement came from someone outside of his own head. With most of the rest of the prisoners around him all lost within their own heads, it was often difficult to remember that anyone else in the world existed. He had long ago stopped caring what others heard from him anyway. He felt like he had lost the capacity to care about anything outside of his own cell.

" _Fancy seeing you here, Evans."_

" _Shove off, Black."_

It was the normal type of exchange between Lily and Sirius just before they started their fourth year, before they were particularly friendly with each other. It was all in good fun though since Sirius wasn't in the middle of pulling any pranks that Lily disapproved of. They had run into each other in Diagon Alley in passing and would have just parted ways and left it at that if not for what happened next. Despite the fact that it started off as such a normal exchange, it was the day things began to change between them.

" _Sirius. Do not speak to a Mudblood in public. It is beneath you." His father had come up behind him._

 _Lily had been horrified. But not half as horrified as Sirius had been._

" _Do not call her that!" Sirius had shouted, whirling on his father._

 _CRACK!_

 _It took him a moment to realize what had happened when his head snapped to one side and he was left blinking stupidly. His father had smacked him across his face, right there in the middle of Diagon Alley. Sirius' cheek was still stinging; indicating what kind of force had been put behind the blow._

" _You will show me respect, boy," he had said matter-of-factly, like nothing out of the ordinary had just happened._

 _The look of shock and pity that Lily had given him that day was still seared into his memory._

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I never wanted to be like them. I never wanted to hurt you." Lily's image faded, replaced by James'. "I never meant for this to happen." James' image, in turn faded, and suddenly he saw Remus, bruised and bleeding just after a transformation. Sirius was only vaguely aware of his own fingernails suddenly digging into his skull. When he spoke again, his voice came out as little more than a whisper. "I'm sorry..."

" _You never think things through!" Remus was shouting at him. "Do you have any idea what you could have done!?"_

 _Remus had Sirius pinned up against the wall in the Gryffindor common room. Sirius had never seen him so angry before, and he couldn't help but shrink away from the rage he saw in his friend's eyes. Rage that was directed solely at him. He was acutely aware of everyone in the Gryffindor common room staring at them. He wished that Remus had at least shown him mercy enough to have this out in the privacy of their dormitory instead of down here in front of everyone._

" _Moony, I'm—"_

" _No!" Remus cut him off. "No, you don't get to just apologize and think everything is fixed! What you did is unforgivable! I trusted you!" It was like all of the air had been sucked out of Sirius' lungs. "And you betrayed me!"_

 _Then suddenly, Remus wound up and punched Sirius in the face. Hard. Sirius had been taken so off guard that he yelped as his head snapped back and collided with the wall behind him._

Sirius cried out as his head jerked backwards from an imagined blow, slamming into the stonewall of his cell with enough force to cause him to see spots.

 _Remus' fist went back, ready for another blow, but someone stopped him._

" _That's enough, Remus," came James' cold voice. "He's not worth busting your knuckles over."_

 _Those words were worse than any beating that Remus would have dealt._

 _Suddenly, Remus and James were gone, and without anyone holding him up, Sirius found himself sliding down the wall until he hit the floor. His eyes were wide and staring straight ahead, but he couldn't seem to comprehend anything he was seeing. Remus had always been the levelheaded one of the group; he wouldn't so much as hurt a fly. And yet, here Sirius sat, blood trickling down from his nose, his face throbbing from the force behind the blow._

 _He had caused Remus to break._

Sirius let out an animalistic screech, shattering the memory. He couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't do this. He wasn't strong enough. How could anyone endure this kind of torture for years on end?

It was getting harder to breath. Spots danced across his vision and suddenly his cell seemed to be blurring in and out of focus. He suddenly wondered when the last time he had anything to eat or drink. He had lost all concept of time and the subtleties between night and day had been lost to him weeks ago.

Glancing around his cell, he was just able to focus on the tray of unidentifiable food that sat over by the barred door. Sirius eyed it wearily. He didn't like the idea of crawling closer to the Dementor just outside of that door in order to get the sustenance. Even without the Dementor, he wasn't sure he had the strength just to cross the small cell.

More than that, he just wasn't sure he really cared enough to try.

He leaned back, letting his head fall back against the wall behind him. He was vaguely aware of the dull ache in his skull from the earlier collision. Was it his imagination, or did the back of his head suddenly feel wet and sticky? How hard had he hit his head before? He was suddenly aware of strange tremors that were running through his body. Something wasn't right. He knew that for certain, but he was having a hard time conjuring up a reason to care.

His eyes sagged. He didn't fight the darkness that clawed at him. Perhaps if he simply gave in, he wouldn't wake up again.

He could only hope.

* * *

 _ **Author's Note**_ _ **:**_ Credit where credit is due. The Diagon Alley scene was inspired by a post that I saw on Tumblr. If you are interested, PM me and I can direct you to it. Also, the conversation between Lily and Sirius where they are talking about their families was actually taken directly out of one of my recent one shots. So if you would like to read that entire scene, please check out my story called _Smoke and Mirrors_.

Please review and let me know what you think!


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

 ** _December 8_** ** _th_** ** _, 1982_** _ **  
**_ ** _Azkaban Prison: Day 401_**

* * *

" _Most go mad in there, and plenty stop eating in the end. They lose the will to live. You could always tell when a death was coming, because the Dementors could sense it, they got excited."_

 ** _-_** _Sirius Black_

* * *

Sometimes he honestly wondered why he was still alive.

It was disturbing the number of prisoners who died here. Even on the lower levels that were supposed to be less intensely patrolled by the Dementors, people seemed to give up with increasing frequency. Whispers would travel up through the prison, passed from inmate to inmate, when the Dementors removed a corpse from a cell. It was usually enough to sober the entire atmosphere of the prison, even the maddest of prisoners seeming to quiet in respect for the passing soul.

It was odd to think of criminals respecting the dead, but the truth was that they all knew that could very well be their own fate as well.

It almost seemed too easy to just let it end. Most of the ones who passed did so of their own choice. They stopped feeding themselves, stopped drinking the water provided and would simply waste away. Sirius knew full well that the option was there. The Dementors didn't care if the inmates consumed their rations or not. In fact, they almost seemed to enjoy the task of removing the bodies, as Sirius had noticed that more Dementors than were strictly necessary would gather at the cell of the deceased.

He wondered vaguely how long it takes to die like that. A week? Maybe more? That wasn't so long in the grand scheme of things, he often mused. He knew he had been here for over a year now, able to estimate the date by studying the sky through the bars of his window on clearer nights thanks to all of those astronomy lessons that had been instilled in him since he was a small child. He had turned twenty-three years old fairly recently and there was no end to his sentence in sight. He could live like this for another sixty years or more… or he could end it in a week or so. It seemed like such an easy decision to make.

So why was he still here?

It was a question he didn't have an answer to. But it was something that he had been contemplating with increasing frequency lately.

He was lying on the lumpy cot in his cell, staring vacantly up at the ceiling, letting memories and voices wash over him like white noise. A plate of what passed for food here lay untouched by the door of his cell. He wasn't completely sure how long it had been there or when the last time he moved from this spot. It was a rare time when the Azkaban was relatively quiet, with only a few shrieks coming up from the lower levels. He was almost afraid to move, almost afraid that somehow he would disturb the rare quiet if he moved around too much.

Something was shifting in the atmosphere outside of his cell. He was unconcerned by this for several minutes, finding that it was often difficult to really care about what went on outside of his four walls these days. As long as the Dementors weren't coming into his cell, he found that he was less and less interested in when and why the creatures were going into other people's cells.

Even when coherent voices were making their way up the passageway, Sirius wasn't aware that anything was really off. He was too busy trying not to feel anything at all, that he was unaware of the hush that was falling over the prison that went beyond the quiet he had just been feeling grateful for.

"Would you move out of my way," an angry voice demanded. "Just… just _move_! Get out of here. We deserve a little privacy."

Sirius found his eyes traveling toward his cell door, noting vaguely that the Dementor was moving away. He knew that was odd, but curiosity was still slow to make its way into his brain. Still, something about that voice struck something within him.

" _Trial? We don't need to waste time and energy on a trial for this lunatic. There was an entire street of Muggle witnesses who all said the same thing!"_

" _Yes, but proper protocol dictates—"_

" _Forget about protocol. This man does not deserve that. I am authorizing his transfer to Azkaban Prison first thing in the morning. The sooner we put him away and throw away the key, the better. It will give the public peace of mind to see this man locked away as soon as possible."_

" _Yes, Mr. Crouch."_

Sirius was suddenly sitting up, but he didn't remember how he had gotten to that point. His eyes were trained on the cell door, now more aware that the Dementor had moved away as a figure passed by. No… it wasn't a figure. As Sirius' eyes adjusted and his mind started catching up to what was happening, he realized it was two figures. They had passed his cell before he could really ascertain anything other than that though.

Sirius pushed himself to his feet and stumbled toward the barred door. He pushed himself up against the metal in order to see up the passageway. The figures had stopped just a few cells down from his, the larger figure with one arm around the smaller one almost as if he could shield it from what was around them. From the smaller figure, he could hear a whimper that sounded distinctly feminine. Sirius narrowed his eyes as he studied the strange scene, unsure what was going on.

"You have a lot of courage, coming in here, Crouch," called Rabastan Lestrange from his cell on the opposite wall of the prison.

So he wasn't mistaken. Barty Crouch, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, stood within the walls of Azkaban Prison. But what could he possibly be doing in here? And who was the smaller, frail looking figure that was with him?

"Come to check on little Barty Jr.?" came a mocking female voice. It took him a moment to recognize that it was Bellatrix speaking. He hadn't heard her speak in several weeks. Her tone had a very strange cadence to it that almost made it sound like she was on the verge of singing a nursery rhyme. It made her sound much more deranged than she usually did. "Don't worry your pretty little head, we've been taking good care of him." Then she laughed manically.

And suddenly it clicked.

Sirius had watched the young man dragged in here a year ago, screaming that he was innocent of his supposed crimes. He had heard other inmates yell at him when he was screaming in his sleep, and because of that he knew that his name was Barty. It wasn't until this moment, as he watched Barty Crouch waiting for the Dementor to unlock the young man's cell, that he realized exactly who this boy was.

It was Barty Crouch Jr. He was the son of the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

Crouch glared at Bellatrix's cell, but did not respond to her. By that time, the Dementor had gotten the door to the younger Crouch's cell open and Crouch turned away, leading the other figure into the cell.

"Is he being released?" Sirius couldn't identify who asked this question.

"Hardly." This voice belonged to Rodolphus Lestrange. He sounded a bit bored and uninterested. "It's clearly a deathbed visit. The boy's been wasting away for weeks."

"A deathbed visit?" Another voice inquired. "In Azkaban? I've never heard of such a thing."

"Some people get special treatment," another voice answered bitterly. "Thought you'd of figured that out by now."

"It would explain why his wife was with him."

Sirius found himself staring at the cells around him. Most of the prisoners had moved to stand near the doors of their cells much like he had. He heard voices he couldn't remember hearing before and couldn't even begin to identify who they belonged to. He was fascinated by the new information he was hearing, as he had heard nothing new for months. With the war officially over and the hunt for Death Eaters seemingly finished, there had been no new prisoners on this level of the prison in months. This isolated them thoroughly from anything that was going on in the outside world, with no one coming in with new information.

But, more than that, Sirius found that he was fascinated by the coherent conversations these inmates were able to have. Crouch had cleared out all the Dementors from this level of the prison for his visit with his son. It was amazing how quickly the prisoners were able to regain themselves with distance from the Dementors that were normally outside of their cells day and night.

"Is my cousin still alive over there?" came Bellatrix's sing song-y voice. Most people seemed more coherent with the absence of the Dementors, but somehow Bellatrix sounded even more unhinged than usual. "I want to point out again how I was given a trial and he didn't, but I don't want to waste my breath if he's dead."

Sirius glared over in the direction of Bellatrix's cell. "Careful, Bella," he said in a low voice. "If you get too excited, the Dementors will be lured back."

"Whatsamatter?" Bellatrix slurred. "Scared, Siri?"

Sirius snorted. "Like you're so brave when the Dementors are around."

"Honestly, I'm surprised that little Sirius is still here with us," came Rabastan's voice. "I'd have thought he'd be the first among us to give up and die."

"Clearly we are not that lucky," Rodolphus drawled.

"Well, we're a little lucky," Bellatrix said. "A year of Barty's pathetic whining and I'm honestly glad to see him finally go."

"No friends amongst Death Eaters," Sirius mumbled.

But if anyone heard him, no one made any indication. There was an energy among the inmates at the top of Azkaban Prison that was just non-existent when the Dementors were around. It was a little disorienting how quickly everyone was able to give in to some casual chitchat.

Sirius was more than happy to have the other inmates move on from acknowledging him, feeling content to fade into the background for now. He found that he was straining to hear anything coming from the cell that the Crouches had entered. Of course, that was next to impossible with the noise that was now rising around him. But he had no desire to speak with anyone in the nearby cells, so he settled for quietly standing guard at the barred door, waiting for Barty Crouch Sr.'s reappearance with his wife.

It didn't take as long as he would have thought. As it turned out, final goodbyes within the Crouch family could apparently be accomplished in under a half hour. The two figures quietly emerged from the cell, Barty Crouch Sr. still supporting his wife. Then, without a backwards glance, Crouch began leading his wife back down the passageway.

Almost as if he could sense his gaze, Crouch looked up and met Sirius' eyes as he was passing his cell. Suddenly, Sirius felt a spark fury burning within him. This was a man that had locked him away without a second thought for a crime that he did not commit. He had the urge to lunge at him, scream and yell at him for taking his life away from him at such a young age. He wanted to shout that his conscious was clear and then demand if Crouch could say the same.

But the words died before they made it to his lips.

Was his conscious really clear? Had he not put James and Lily in danger, ultimately leading to both of their deaths? He knew he hadn't helped himself after his arrest either. They brought him into the Ministry laughing hysterically, finding the idea that little, dimwitted Peter had not only been able to pull the wool over all of their eyes for months – maybe even years – but also had pulled off a scheme so diabolical that it make Sirius question why it had been him and James always being the masterminds behind their pranks at Hogwarts. After he had been brought in, he made no effort to speak to anyone and didn't answer any of the questions asked of him. It had felt like speaking was impossible, and looking back he knew he had been in shock over the events of the previous twenty-four hours. Then, after his sentence was declared, he never once tried to fight it.

Because from the beginning, he believed that even though he may not have actually committed the crime that he was accused of, that didn't mean that he didn't deserve to be here.

So as he met Crouch's eyes, he said nothing. He simply watched as the man passed by his cell, still supporting his small wife who had gone silent, not so much as a whimper passing her lips.

" _Anybody with half a brain should know that you're innocent."_

Sirius jerked in surprise as he turned toward the source of the voice. He blinked several times. It was the strangest hallucination he had seen yet. James Potter stood there in his cell. He had the gauzy look to him of a ghost but still appeared whole and unharmed, and for the first time since his imprisonment, Sirius saw him without anger or malice in his eyes. He was looking at Sirius much the same way he had often looked at him while they were in school, with a sympatric look in his eyes and a sad smile on his lips.

Sirius turned away from the cell door and was silent for a minute as he studied the figure a bit skeptically. "I really am starting to lose my mind," he mumbled to himself.

Astonishingly, James snorted impatiently at him, his imagined form flickering like the delicate flame of a candle about to go out. _"Would you rather I yell at you?"_

Sirius considered this for a moment. "I think I would," he concluded matter-of-factly. He knew this was going to go away. He knew the Dementors would be coming back any minute and all this would be shattered and replaced with only his most terrible memories. That made this encounter more painful than his delusions of James screaming at him.

" _You were always so full of yourself."_

It was Sirius' turn to snort at the figment of his imagination. "Not helping, Prongs," he pointed out dryly

But the delusion continued. _"You would earn detention and wear it like a badge of honor. You never shied away from the choices that you made. Even the poor choices. When you told Snape how to get passed the Whomping Willow, you owned that choice even though you were ashamed of it. You never tried to hide from it."_

"You better make your point quickly, James," Sirius pointed out. He could hear movement out in the passageway beyond his cell. The Dementors were returning. Their time was running short.

" _This quiet self-destruction is what you would do when your parents would go after you for things that weren't wrong or weren't your fault. You had this way of punishing yourself worse than they ever could because they made you feel so worthless. The Ministry essentially did the same thing to you when they didn't give you a chance to defend yourself."_

Screams were making their way up the passageway as the Dementors were coming back to take up their posts. Sirius felt oddly detached from himself though, unconcerned with what was about to happen. Imagined or not, James' words struck something deep within him.

He took a deep breath. "Do… do you think Remus thinks I'm guilty?" he asked in a small voice. It was something he often found himself wondering. Remus was the only one of them that was still alive and still free. Sirius often wished he could have one last conversation with Remus in order to find out what he thought of him now.

But, of course, the projection couldn't tell him something that he didn't already know himself. James' figure was looking more faint as his head shook and he looked at him with a grim expression. _"I don't know."_

Sirius nodded, not surprised by the response. He didn't react as he heard the door scrapping open behind him. He kept his eyes on James' fading form.

"I miss you," he said quietly.

There wasn't time for a response though.

A skeletal hand clamped down on his shoulder, hard. Sirius flinched at the contact, but other than that he made no indication that he was aware of the Dementor behind him. Clearly the creatures felt the need to reclaim their territory with Crouch's departure.

" _You worthless boy!"_

His mother's voice seemed to fill the cell. And against all his instincts… he smirked. The expression felt strange, as if his muscles could feel something that his mind just could not grasp anymore.

Some part of him seemed to have just let go. Seeing James' form and hearing him give him advice again, even if it had just been a product of his own disintegrating sanity, had given him something to hold onto. It wasn't something that was happy, for no matter what the fact still remained that James was dead. It wasn't anything that the Dementors could feed off of and take away from him.

For the first time in over a year, Sirius had something he could hold onto.

* * *

 ** _December 10_** ** _th_** ** _, 1982_** _ **  
**_ ** _Azkaban Prison: Day 403_**

Sirius remained at the front of his cell for several days. He sat in the corner, which was just a few feet from the cell door. His spot gave him the best vantage point that he could manage in order to see up the passageway. He kept a constant watch for days, obsessed with what was about to happen.

It didn't take long. Only a few days after Crouch's visit, Sirius witnessed a handful of Dementors converge on the cell. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but the end of the boy's life was much quieter than he thought it would be. There was no screaming or final agonized yell as he left this world. It was as if he had simply faded away.

Sirius was completely still, watching from the shadows as two Dementors reemerged from the cell, carrying a figure wrapped in a grey sheet. He was so mesmerized by the sight that he was unaware if there were any comments about the boy's passing made by the Death Eaters around him, who had already established that they were not sorry to see him go.

Sirius only moved after the Dementors had passed by his cell, heading down the path that would take them out of the prison. He stood up and moved to the other side of his cell so he could see down the passageway, watching the Dementors' retreating figures as they made their way down the levels of the prison. There was a hush that seemed to follow them as the inmates watched another soul that had been lost to Azkaban.

When he could no longer glimpse the Dementors as they moved to the lower levels, Sirius turned away from the door. Before he realized what he was doing, he had taken the cot that was on one side of the cell and shoved it up against the back wall, the loud, scrapping noises of metal against stone echoing in the relative quiet of the prison. The Dementor at his door rustled, as if it was debating Sirius' behavior and whether or not he needed to be subdued. Thankfully, it remained in place.

Sirius climbed on top of the cot, the springs squeaking in protest. From this new vantage point, he could reach the barred window set high up in the wall of his cell. His eyes automatically went to the sky first. The clouds had thinned, not enough to see the stars but enough to see the glow of the moon that lay just beyond. It was very late at night.

Sirius' gaze then fell to the ground far below. It was only then that he realized just how high up his cell in Azkaban was. It was even taller than the Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts. And with that thought, a memory from that place suddenly crashed over him.

" _Padfoot?_ _" James said slowly, sounding a little unsure. But Sirius barely heard him. Suddenly he was climbing up onto the ledge that circled the Astronomy Tower. "Sirius? What are you doing?" There was a vague hint of apprehension in James_ _'_ _voice._

 _Slowly and carefully, Sirius stood up. The ledge was about half a meter wide and Sirius_ _'_ _feet were planted firmly in the center, his balance sure. But there was something completely freeing about standing so close to the edge with the ground so far below him. The wind whipped through his robes and he knew he should be cold, but somehow he just couldn't feel it. He took a deep breath of the fresh air, remembering suddenly that none of the windows in Number Twelve Grimmauld Place opened._

" _It could be over…" Sirius murmured to himself._

" _C_ _'_ _mon, Sirius," James said uneasily. There was shuffling around behind him and Sirius imagined that James had stood up. "Get down."_

" _Don_ _'_ _t tell me what to do," Sirius growled lowly, his eyes clouding over._

" _Okay," James said quickly, clearly sensing the shift in Sirius_ _'_ _demeanor. "Okay, I won_ _'_ _t. Just… be careful, all right? That_ _'_ _s a long way down."_

 _Sirius smirked._ _"Yeah. A long way." He took a small and deliberate step forward._

 _"C'mon, Sirius, this isn't funny." Any humor was gone from James' voice and there was a hint of something odd in his tone._

 _"No, it isn't," Sirius agreed, grim resolution in his voice._

In their fifth year at school, James had literally had to talk Sirius off a ledge. He had been driven to desperation by his family, believing that anything would be better than having to go back home. Even jumping off the Astronomy Tower and ending his life. Until this past year, it had been the lowest moment in his life. James had to convince him of the value of his own life, something his own parents had never bothered to do.

Time must have passed, because when he was able to focused once again on the ground down below, he saw that the Dementors had reached the extensive graveyard that circled the prison. A hole had already been dug in anticipation of Barty's death, and the dark creatures were lowering the boy's body into the earth. Apparently, the Crouches cared enough to pay a short visit to their son on his deathbed, though not enough to want to retrieve his body for a proper burial. That seemed odd to Sirius.

As he watched, Sirius couldn't help but feel like he was witnessing his own fate. Barty Crouch Jr. had only been a few years younger than him. He couldn't have been much older than nineteen or so. Is this the only thing that Sirius had to look forward to?

As the Dementors finished and left the fresh grave, there was a burning question within Sirius. This place was hell on earth. There was no denying that. But could a soul really ever be at peace if it passed in a place like this?

He didn't want to die here, innocent of the crimes that he had been committed for yet still forgotten by the world. Something about that seemed fundamentally wrong to him. There may not be a light at the end of this tunnel, and it might turn out to be all for nothing, but for the first time in a year, Sirius decided that he wanted to survive. Not just from one day to the next, but for the long term. He wanted to find ways to cope with this hell that he found himself in. At twenty-three years old, he wasn't yet ready to be buried in the ground.

He wanted to live.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note:** Hi everybody! I'm still here! So, so sorry this is so incredibly late. I've been a little distracted the past couple months with stories for other fandoms. My mind just hasn't been able to focus on this, even though I've had the majority of this particular chapter written for several months now. So… is anybody still following this? Because I am still hoping to continue with this and cover several more aspects of Sirius' incarceration. So if you're reading this and would like to see more, please sound off like you got a pair in the form of a review! I'll probably continue working on this either way, but it'd be nice to know if anyone else is still interested in this. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter!

* * *

 **Chapter Eight**

 _ **March 19th, 1983  
Azkaban Prison: Day 503**_

* * *

" _I think the only reason I never lost my mind is that I knew I was innocent. That wasn't a happy thought, so the dementors couldn't suck it out of me . . . but it kept me sane and knowing who I am . . ."_

 _ **-**_ _Sirius Black_

* * *

Sirius slowly inhaled and then exhaled, focusing on the feeling of air flowing through his lungs. Bracing his feet on the stone floor, he pushed himself further back into the corner of his cell, trying to get as far away from the door as physically possible in the small space. With his spine pressing up against the back wall, he leaned his head to one side in order to feel the cool stone of the adjacent wall against the fevered skin of his cheek.

"C'mon, Sirius," he murmured to himself. He tried to put force behind his tone, as if he could command his weary body to cooperate. However his voice came out raspy and weak. "Concentrate, damnit."

He lifted his hands once again, holding them so that they were hovering a few inches apart up close to his chest, just under his chin. Despite his battle for calm and focus, his fingers were trembling. After a minute of staring at the empty space between his palms, he pulled his knees up, folding himself even more completely into the corner, as if he could make himself small enough to escape the reach of the dementors that resided just outside of his cell.

He had been foolish. It took him over a year in this place to really comprehend the effect the dementors were having on him. He had been so inclined to blame his symptoms on anything else – nicotine withdrawal, dehydration, malnutrition – to avoid the reality of the situation. Now that he was fighting for some kind of control of his life, he realized just how much the dementors were taking from him.

He glared down at the space between his hands as it remained frustratingly empty. He noticed the way his fingers shook even more with his attempt at concentration, sending tremors up through his thin wrists. He closed his eyes, trying to gather what energy he could and push it toward his hands. This was something he used to do back at Grimmauld Place. His parents often confiscated his wand from him and would lock him in his room for punishments. He would use that time to practice what little wandless magic he could. Even a small display – sparks from his fingers or perhaps a small flame floating between his palms – would assure him that he was not powerless and was not helpless, even without the aid of his wand.

After several minutes of concentration, he opened his eyes and found that nothing had changed. He let out a groan of annoyance that echoed throughout his cell and caused the dementors to shift restlessly just outside the door. Sirius eyed the front of his cell wearily, but thankfully the door stayed firmly shut.

It had been relatively uneventful over the past couple weeks – or had it been months? – within the prison. This didn't sit well with the dementors. They became more restless as the prisoners lost parts of themselves and had less for the dementors to feed off of. The lack of much in the way of new prisoners also probably added to the problem, making the dementors hungrier than usual. Because the dark creatures were the only beings running this prison, they took any liberties that they pleased, beginning to frequent the prisoners' cells more often for no apparent reason in order to get a better taste of the waning humanity within. Sirius suspected that was the cause of several of the unexpected deaths in the last couple weeks. It hardly mattered though; it wasn't as if the Ministry of Magic was going to waste any of their time looking into the deaths of the inmates of Azkaban Prison, no matter how suspicious they might be.

It would be so easy to just lie down and give up. He had contemplated that very thing so many times over the past year. He could so easily let go and just let the dementors take everything from him. But something about that didn't sit right with him. So much of his life had been dictated for him; his parents had controlled him for most of his life, and then his life had been consumed by fighting the war against Voldemort. So if there was any way for him to take charge of his own life, he had to try.

After he was sure that the dementors weren't about to pay him a visit, he took another deep breath and lifted his hands again. He had nothing but time and he was determined to make some kind of progress and take some kind of small control over his life. He had no hopes of producing something as powerful as a Patronus – he knew that even overlooking the amount of magical energy he would need to perform that spell, holding on to a strong enough happy memory in this place was next to impossible—but if he could tap into some of his powers, perhaps he could figure out some other way to protect himself. For now though, he was just grateful for a task to focus on in order to pass the time and exercise his mind.

He took a deep breath and willed his energy to gather in his fingertips once again. He stared at the empty space between his hands, frowning. He had always been good at wandless magic at some level.

 _You never were as smart as you thought you were,_ came his mother's condescending voice.

"Thank you for your input, mother," Sirius murmured sarcastically, his gaze and concentration never wavering. His mother's insults always scraped at his skin, but at the same time it had become a bit mundane in a sense, especially in this place where they were a common attack to his psyche.

He brought his hands together and carefully rubbed his fingers. His extremities were cold and sore at this point. He had been at this for days, at least by his flawed estimation. In any case, it wasn't as if he had anything better to do with his time, so after flexing out the kinks in his fingers he brought his hands up and concentrated once more.

Time kept passing, but the space between Sirius' palms remained empty. He let out a frustrated breath as he dropped his hands down into his lap, suddenly short of breath as if he had just run a great distance.

Frustration and anger filled him. Even children were capable of some form of wandless magic, however accidental and unpredictable it might be. A wand was simply a tool, a way to focus and control magical energy. It shouldn't be this difficult for Sirius to access his magical energy and have it manifest itself in some small way.

" _You need to put more force into it."_

Sirius hung his head at the sound of James' voice, feeling himself being pulled toward the past against his will.

" _I did put more force into it," Sirius snapped in irritation._

" _Clearly not enough," James pointed out with an annoying amount of calm._

" _Shut it," Sirius said, raising his wand once more. "Expecto Patronum!" A weak puff of white smoke drifted lazily from the tip of his wand. Sirius let out a groan of irritation, only barely resisting the urge to chuck his wand across the dormitory._

 _It was their third year at Hogwarts, and they had only recently started kicking around the idea of becoming Animagi in order to accompany Remus during his monthly transformations. Before they could pursue this idea though, they had to find out what their Animagi forms would be in order to see if they would be up to the task of keeping a full grown werewolf in check. Sirius had joked that it would do Remus no good to have a group of rabbits hopping around the Shrieking Shack. After more research, they had found out that a wizard's Patronus would take the same form that the wizard would turn into as an Animagus. So, while Remus was otherwise occupied on the night of the full moon, the three remaining Marauders were trying to learn to cast corporal Patronus charms._

 _Even though this was advanced magic that should have been several years at least beyond their abilities as thirteen year old wizards, Sirius and James had gone into this with the same confidence they did any of the rest of their studies. Without trying, they were at the top of most of their classes. Surely this would come just as naturally to them as anything else they put their minds to would._

 _It took more time than they had anticipated. Three months after they had first attempted the spell – working only when Remus was away so as not to tip him off to their plans just yet – James had finally produced a Patronus that took the clear form of a stag. The following month, Peter had surprised all three of them by being the next to produce a corporal Patronus, taking the form of a rat._

 _That had been two months before, and Sirius still hadn't been able to create a corporal Patronus of his own._

" _Well, clearly you're doing something wrong," James drawled, watching him wearily from where he sat on the end of his bed._

" _Yeah, I got that, thanks," Sirius said, his voice sharp with sarcasm. He took a deep breath and tried to focus on a memory of a particularly exciting Quidditch game from a few weeks before. "Expecto Patronum!" he practically shouted. This time nothing at all happened. He let out a loud groan of frustration._

" _Maybe your memory isn't strong enough," Peter spoke up from where he sat next to James. "I had just switched my memory right before I got the spell to work for me."_

 _Sirius knew that Peter was only trying to be helpful, but he couldn't help but notice that he sounded just a little bit smug; obviously enjoying the fact that he wasn't the last one in their group to learn a new spell for once._

" _I swear on my mother's grave, Peter, if you don't shut your mouth I'm going to hex you back into first year," Sirius growled. He really didn't need to be reminded that Peter of all people had performed this spell before he had._

 _Peter blinked at him, confusion working its way into his features. "But… you're mother isn't dead. She doesn't have a grave."_

" _That's it!" Sirius snapped, turning his wand on Peter._

" _Hey!" James said loudly, quick to action as he had clearly anticipated what was about to happen. He was on his feet and pushing Sirius' hand so that his wand was no longer pointing at Peter, who had fallen off the bed in his surprise, his eyes wide with fear._

" _Get off me," Sirius hissed. Anger bubbling its way to the surface, he shoved James away from him with enough force to send him stumbling. But when James looked at him, he didn't look annoyed, but rather sympathetic._

" _Peter, why don't you run down to the kitchens," James suggested mildly as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred. "We could use some fuel if we're going to be staying up late practicing tonight."_

" _But…" Peter started unsurely as he slowly pulled himself to his feet, looking back and forth between Sirius – who practically had steam coming out of his ears – and James._

" _It's still early, you'll be fine," James assured him with a dismissive wave of his hand. "If anyone catches you, just tell them you got lost on the way back from the library."_

" _Um, okay," Peter said, still looking thrown off balance, as if he weren't entirely sure what just happened. He turned and walked out of the room as if he were in a trance._

" _So, you want to tell me what's really going on?" James said, turning back to Sirius once they were alone._

 _Sirius gave him a blank look. "What do you mean?"_

" _You haven't been focused on this in months," James pointed out._

" _Well, this is a stupid spell," Sirius said, scowling. "It isn't as if we're ever going to need it, it's only used to repel dementors and when the hell are we ever going to run into those? We should just move on and start working on the Animagus transformation. That's what really matters."_

" _You know that we need to find out what kind of animal you'll turn into before we devote our time to that," James said with an annoying amount of patience. "The stag will fair okay against a werewolf, but we really need another big animal if we want any hope of keeping it in check. Peter certainly isn't going to help us in that way as a rat." He paused then continued carefully. "Which memory are you using?"_

" _What?" Sirius said, even though he knew exactly what he was asking. He just desperately didn't want to answer that question._

" _Which happy memory are you using when you're trying to cast the spell?" James repeated calmly. "The book said that it has to be a pure and strong memory in order to produce a corporal Patronus."_

" _I know what the book said," Sirius huffed._

" _So, what's the memory?" James asked again, trying a little too hard to sound casual._

" _That Quidditch game a few weeks ago against Hufflepuff," Sirius answered, trying to sound more sure of the memory than he felt._

 _James contemplated that carefully. "Maybe that's not a strong enough memory?"_

" _Well, we've been at this for months and I'm running out of memories to try," Sirius said angrily. This time he did throw his wand in frustration, sending it clattering across the floor as it emitted a few sparks, before he stomped off to his bed and flung himself onto it._

" _Which memories have you tried?" James asked slowly as he watched him carefully._

 _Sirius sighed heavily. "Getting on the train first year. Seeing the castle the first time. Getting Sorted into Gryffindor."_

 _James looked surprised at that. "None of those worked?"_

" _No," Sirius said quietly, his gaze falling to study his hands in his lap. "I shouldn't be surprised though. On the train, I was convinced I was going to get Sorted into Slytherin, even though I didn't want to. Same with when I saw the castle for the first time. I thought that getting into Gryffindor would have been the memory that worked… but then I remembered that even though I felt relieved, I couldn't help but think of my parents' reaction when they found out."_

" _Oh," James said softly._

" _They ruin everything," Sirius mumbled, the anger that he surrounded himself with finally draining out of him, leaving anguish in its wake that threatened to drag him down into a deep hole of depression. He didn't look up as he softly continued. "Everything I should have been happy about is ruined by them." He paused and then dropped his head into his hands. "Maybe I don't have a happy enough memory to produce a corporeal Patronus."_

Sirius tried to hold on to the memory, even as it began to fade away. It had been a devastating thing for him to admit at the time, but James had talked him through it. He had managed to produce a corporal Patronus that night. What memory had finally done it? What had been his happy memory? It was like it was floating just beyond his grasp, trickling through his fingers each time he tried to reach for it. He tried to think of any of the other times he had created a Patronus and tried to remember the memories that went with them. But it was as if none of his happy memories had ever existed.

No, he had no hope of producing a Patronus in this place, with or without a wand.

Sirius tried to focus on his hands again, still hoping to produce some evidence of magic, no matter how small. But his concentration was slipping away from him, even more so than it had been before the memory had overwhelmed him.

" _I swear on my mother's grave, Peter, if you don't shut your mouth I'm going to hex you back into first year."_

Sirius swallowed. He hadn't thought of Peter much since he had been sent here. He wasn't quite sure why that was, why he wasn't obsessing over the person who had destroyed his life as well as the lives of his closest friends. But suddenly he could clearly see Peter's thirteen year old face, fear in his eyes as he looked up at him.

But that had been a rare occurrence. There were very few times that he could think of where he was outright mean or cruel to Peter. He had a habit of losing his temper, he had no delusions about that, and he knew that whoever happened to be in his path felt the wrath of it. It wasn't just Peter; he had done the same to James and Remus on several occasions.

"So why did you betray us?" Sirius whispered hoarsely, staring vacantly across his cell at nothing in particular.

 _You just couldn't stand it that I had learned that spell before you._ Never before had Sirius heard Peter's voice sound so vicious.

"No… no that wasn't it…"

 _You brought this on yourself, you know. You drove me to this. This is all your fault! If you had been a better friend, this never would have happened!_

"I was never perfect," Sirius whispered. Then he slowly raised his head, glaring at nothing in particular. "But I would have died to protect my friends. I would have died to protect _you_ , Peter." He snorted, a noise as close to a condescending laugh as he could manage. "Loyal as a dog, as they say." His voice was bitter, painfully scraping out of his throat.

 _Liar! You never cared for me like you cared for James and Remus! You even cared for Lily more than you cared for me!_

"I trusted you, didn't I?" Sirius murmured. Had he been more aware, he would have realized how pointless it was to argue with a figment of his imagination. But the delusion had consumed him and he couldn't quite separate the real from the imagined. He couldn't quite be sure he wasn't actually having this conversation with Peter. "I pushed Remus away while I placed James and Lily's lives in _your_ hands."

 _You always thought you were more clever than me. It serves you right that you ended up here because you underestimated me._

Sirius squeezed his eyes shut as he rubbed his temples. "Maybe you're right."

The final confrontation with Peter suddenly appeared clearly in his mind's eye.

 _Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?_

It was like all the air had been sucked out of his cell. Peter had shouted that at him, knowing full well that would cause Sirius to hesitate. Knowing full well where exactly Sirius' insecurities and weaknesses lay.

It was the one time that Peter beat him to the draw. He could still hear the sound of the explosion that had torn up that street and had killed twelve innocent bystanders. The impact had knocked him off his feet and dazed him. In the chaos that followed – Muggles running every which way and screaming – Sirius had looked up just in time to see that familiar rat disappearing down a nearby sewer.

Sirius hadn't immediately known that Peter had cut off one of his fingers before he transformed. That bit of information had made its way to him only after he had been arrested.

For the first time, Sirius wondered if Peter was still even alive. He knew that kind of injury on a person would be fatal; he would have bled out without medical attention and he knew for a fact that Peter was no good at healing spells. But on a rat, it was probably a much more minor injury. Even so, how would Peter fare, living his life as a rat in a sewer? That had been over a year ago – had that much time really passed? – it was hard to imagine Peter surviving in the sewers that long.

It was comforting to think that maybe after all that, Peter transformed into a rat only to be eaten by an alley cat somewhere in the bowels of London.

 _And it's comforting to me to know that you are rotting away in here and will never walk free again._

Sirius snorted at that. Because in all honestly, he had no real desire to be free. What was left for him in the outside world? Everyone out there was better off without him. He may not be guilty of the crime that had landed him here, but that didn't mean that he deserved his freedom after he had failed his friends so severely. But that didn't mean that he wanted to be drained by dementors until he was nothing but an empty shell. He still had some sense of self preservation, and he knew he had to at least try.

He slowly inhaled through his nose before quickly exhaling through his mouth, grabbing hold of his focus with a new determination. He rolled his head on his shoulders as he raised his hands once more. He reminded himself that a wand was simply a tool that was used to focus magical energy that was within a witch or wizard. They could take away his wand, but they couldn't take away the energy within him.

There was a new intensity within him as he stared at his hands, focusing any scraps of magical energy he had left within him to pool in his fingertips. For several minutes, nothing happened. But he did not allow his concentration to waiver, even for a moment.

Then finally, with a soft crackle, he saw blue sparks jump between his fingertips. They were gone in the blink of an eye, but there was no denying what he had seen and felt.

He smirked.


End file.
